


The Flower Tender

by apolesen



Category: Doctor Who: Eighth Doctor Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: A - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Victorian, F/M, M/M, Mental Institutions, Obverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-04
Updated: 2011-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 05:16:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apolesen/pseuds/apolesen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A beautiful madman, who talks of begonias and mermaids. A girl who is not a tenant or a maid or a companion, perhaps not even the pious rescue worker she seems to be. Fitz Kreiner, who leaves his rooms in the semislum of Hoxton to join the eccentric household, entering into a world which challenges the very values of the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Victorian AU of Obverse.

Fitz Kreiner first met the Doctor two days before his mother died. He had been to see her, or rather peek through the little hatch in the door at her. Doctor Smith had explained that she would not speak to him; it was an understatement. As soon as he had made her out on the floor, straightjacketed and prophesying the coming of Satan, he had turned and walked away from her screams. His feet knew the way through the corridors by now, and he simply let them make the way towards the world outside. In the corridor flanked by wards for patients who fared better than his mother, he was suddenly aware of footsteps behind him. Curious to see who walked behind him, he turned. Afterwards, he often wondered what course his life would have taken if he had not.

He had completely misjudged how close his pursuer was, and he found himself staring into a pair of intense blue eyes, only inches from his own. The face they belonged to bore a refined kind of pallidness, and was particularly beautiful for a man’s, the long hair adding to the femininity. He was dressed only in an elaborate nightgown; when Fitz looked down, he saw his bare feet sticking out under the hem. Something in that gaze stopped the ‘what can I do for you?’ or the ‘watch your step, mate’, and instead, they stood close for a long, silent moment and stared at each other.

Finally the man laughed, as if in relief, and touched his cheek.

‘You,’ he said in awe and spread his other hand over his heart. ‘You’re a dying flower. I want to save you.’ Fitz did not know what to answer - all these years with an insane mother, and he still did not know how to rebuke a madman. ‘I could show you things,’ the man continued in a whisper. He sounded eager to persuade him. ‘You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen...’

‘Yeah, that’s why you’re in here,’ Fitz finally said and turned. As he walked away, the man cried after him, his high tenor like a bird’s shriek:

‘You need repotting and watering and loving care - you’re already losing your petals!’ Fitz quickened his step, and made an effort to not seem shaken.

Then two days later he had received a telegram about his mother’s death. At least it hadn’t been suicide. They said it was a bleeding of the brain, and that did not sound like a euphemism. He went back to the asylum to see to the paper-work and make arrangements for the funeral. She had no personal belongings he could bring with him; she had not owned anything for years, just like she had not been outside or actually spoken to her son. Fitz left the doctor’s office with only a copy of the death certificate in his pocket. As he went down the steps leading from the door, he tried to remember his mother before she had started believing that she was possessed, before places like this had become the only place she could be. Surely at some point she had been a person - a human being - a mother? He could not remember it properly.

‘Mr Kreiner!’ He heard the cry when he was halfway through lighting a cigarette. When he looked up, he spotted two figures sitting on the lawn, waving at him. Still he steered his steps closer to see who they were, and suddenly recognised one of them as the lunatic from the corridor. He was more appropriately dressed now, albeit rather flamboyantly so; perhaps he was one of those aesthetes he had heard of. He certainly looked dandyish in his bottle-green velvet coat and grey embroidered waistcoat. When Fitz drew nearer, he realised that he was not wearing any shoes. There was a pair in the grass, as if they had been brought for him but he had refused to put them on. Beside him sat a girl, no older than seventeen, dressed in a pink dress and a wide-brimmed hat. She had a sweet smile, which she awarded to him as she watched as the dandy jump to his feet and approached Fitz. Stopping at a decent distance, the man reached out his hand.

‘I’m very sorry about your mother,’ he said. Fitz accepted the hand-shake, perplexed.

‘Did you know my mum?’

‘We spoke occasionally,’ the man explained. ‘She spoke very highly of you.’ When Fitz did not answer, he added: ‘Although it often happens in cases like hers that to her loved ones, the patient seems... unrecognisable. It is a great tragedy.’

‘Thank you,’ Fitz said, briefly ashamed at how little grief he felt; at least it was all over now. He watched the gentleman in puzzlement; was this really the same man who had accosted him in the corridor? They certainly looked exactly the same, and it was the same voice, but two days ago, he had seemed almost as mad as his mother. Today his tone was carefully measured, compassionate and undeniably sane.

‘I’m called the Doctor,’ the man said and then turned to the girl. She grabbed the hand he offered her and got to her feet. ‘And this is Samantha Jones.’

‘How do you do,’ she said and bobbed a courtesy.

‘We’re just about to go home for a cup of tea,’ the Doctor explained. ‘Would you care to join us?’ Fitz bit his lip, thinking that he should go talk to the undertaker at once, and glanced from the girl to the dandy. He had not been addressed with such earnestness for a long time.

‘That would be wonderful,’ he admitted.

***

The warmth of that encounter lingered many days. They took him with them on the omnibus to somewhere close to Primrose Hill. Judging by the green light which fell through the window into the parlour, he thought there was a garden behind the house. He was curious to see if that was the case, but he did not dare to crane his neck and look out of the window properly. The girl - Fitz started thinking of her as Samantha at once, rather than Miss Jones - had made scones and brought tea. She and the Doctor sat on the couch while Fitz was seated opposite them, feeling precarious in his coarse clothes where he sat in a velvet-clad armchair. All the while, he wondered ruefully why the odd couple had asked him over for tea. He watched as Samantha, whom the Doctor called Sam, as if she were a boy, fussed over the Doctor, and tried to hide his smile. It struck him that the Doctor must just have been discharged; suddenly he felt like he was intruding on something private - the emotion of reunion and the implication of ill-health. But every time he thought of leaving, the Doctor turned his shining eyes on him and asked him some question. Fitz found himself talking about the flower stall at the market and the baskets of violets he prepared for the flower girls, his long-dead father and his dingy room on Pitfield Street. When he left, the Doctor walked him to the door and bid him farewell. As he walked away from the house, the Doctor’s brilliant smile still floated before his eyes, like when one had stared too long into the light and saw green spots in the shadows.

After the consciousness of that meeting, it felt odd that their next encounter was by chance. It was over a week after the invitation to tea. That morning had been his mother’s funeral, and Fitz had not been able to face his cramped room in Hoxton. Instead, he had wandered all the way to Hyde Park, still in his finest clothes and with the black armband around his sleeve, even if he had his everyday cap in his hand. When he caught sight of the two figures, one in green and the other in white, he wondered for a moment if he was imagining it in an attempt to break his dreary walk. His stomach gave a surprised jolt when he realised that was not the case. The Doctor smiled at him. Today, unlike before, he was wearing shoes, but still no hat.

‘Oh, this is wonderful,’ he said when they drew close. ‘I can go feed the ducks!’ Then suddenly he had let go of Samantha’s arm and set off towards the Serpentine, tugging a bag of bread out of his pocket. Fitz looked at him, feeling an odd kind of disappointment. Then Samantha caught his eye, where she looked up at him attentively.

‘I’m sorry for your loss, Mister Kreiner.’ He shrugged, not knowing what to say. Instead he looked after the Doctor again; he was just a speck of green by the lake now.

‘Why...?’ he asked, and she laughed softly.

‘He won’t let me be there when he feeds the ducks,’ she explained. ‘I think it’s a ceremony of his.’ Then she tilted her head and asked: ‘Shall we go for a walk?’ Feeling rather clumsy in his oddly matched clothes, he offered her his arm, which she nevertheless accepted. They walked in silence for a long time. First, he was worried that she would try to ask questions about his mother, but she only looked around the park, as if the world was new to her. He watched her instead; she looked so innocent, and he wondered how she had ended up living with a madman.

‘Is the Doctor your uncle?’ he asked. It was the only explanation he could think of.

‘When people ask, yes,’ she said. ‘Or guardian.’

‘“When people ask”?’ Fitz repeated.

‘He’s really nothing of the kind,’ she admitted with an unconcerned smile. ‘Although he’s the closest I’ve had to a father or an uncle or a guardian for a long time.’

‘How did you meet him? If I may ask...?’ She nodded.

‘He saved me,’ she said. ‘Not in the Christian sense, in the actual sense.’ He thought back to what the Doctor had said to him when he had met him in the corridor. _You’re a dying flower. I want to save you._

‘How come?’

‘The thugs in Lambeth don’t appreciate the Salvation Army,’ she said simply. ‘I have no idea what the Doctor was doing there, but I think I would have died of shame if he hadn’t turned up when he did.’ He shuddered inwardly of what she implied, but also saw a new side of her. She may be young, but she was already trying to help the less fortunate. ‘After that, I was glad to take up his offer of a position in his household. I did not really dare to continue my work with the less fortunate.’

‘Do you mean you’re really his maid?’

‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘Although I do clean and cook for him, when he doesn’t insist on doing it himself. I guess really I’m his tenant. He calls me his companion.’ Fitz frowned, and Samantha glanced up at him from below her hat. She stopped and let go of his arm. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Mister Kreiner,’ she said sagely, ‘but it is nothing of the kind. I am not a kept woman.’

‘I wasn’t implying...’ he said, terrified at having insulted her, but she did not look rebuking.

‘The term he uses does have connotations,’ Samantha said, smiling. ‘I don’t think he’s noticed them himself, though.’

‘He seems an amicable gentleman, although... eccentric.’ She smiled, happy at the mutual understanding, and then admitted:

‘I’m very glad he decided to speak to you. He needs more friends.’ He just nodded, not daring to admit that he was equally glad. In order to lighten the mood, he suggested getting some lemonade, and well at the stand, he got some for the Doctor as well. They walked towards the Serpentine and could see the Doctor throw the last of the crumbs to the congregation of ducks by him. Fitz watched him brush the locks out of his eyes, and then stop in the middle of the motion, watching the sky with a smile. There was an intriguing otherness about the image. The look of serenity on the Doctor’s face, Fitz contemplated, was truly beautiful.

Samantha left his side and rushed to the Doctor, breaking the spell. As Fitz approached, he felt vaguely disappointed at that she had ruined the moment, but could not tell exactly what she had spoiled. Instead he just offered the glass of lemonade wordlessly to the Doctor.

‘For me?’ he said, eyes shining and then accepted it. ‘Where did you say you lived, Fitz?’ he asked and sipped the lemonade.

‘Hoxton,’ Fitz said. The Doctor’s way of addressing him with his first name made him feel strange inside. ‘On Pitfield Street.’

‘Hardly an ideal location,’ the Doctor commented. ‘You’ve seen my house close to Primrose Hill. It’s large - we have plenty of room.’ He reached out and took Samantha’s hand, as if to show who the “we” were. ‘Come and live with us.’ Fitz opened his mouth in astonishment and closed it again several times.

‘I couldn’t possibly...’ he said uncertainly. Did he really want another madman on his hands? Taking care of his mother, or trying to, had been daunting enough. And Samantha and the Doctor seemed so close - did he really want to live with two people who were like that? Did he trust them not to have him embroiled in some emotional charade? Then again, he had believed Samantha when she had said that there was nothing indecent going on - perhaps she was just a good friend, who doubled as his maid, just as she said. He could not imagine her lying, or being involved in anything inappropriate. Besides, the Doctor seemed far too oblivious... Then he thought of his room on Pitfield Street, and felt nothing but vague disgust for the drab, lifeless place. Would he miss any of it?

‘There’s a garden,’ the Doctor continued. ‘A real vegetable garden. You like plants, don’t you?’

‘I sell them,’ Fitz said, feeling rather dumb. ‘I don’t know if I’m particularly good at them...’

‘Still,’ the Doctor said, smiling now. ‘We could tend it together. What do you say?’ He looked him straight in the eye and Fitz felt his gaze caught in those enchanting eyes. As if his eyes controlled him, he nodded, and the Doctor’s face split into a wide smile and pulled him into an embrace. ‘Wonderful!’ he exclaimed when he pulled back and held him at arm’s length. ‘Go! Pack your things! Get a cab - I’ll pay it. 18 Elsworthy Road.’ He grinned ecstatically and then bounded close again and pressed his lips against Fitz’s cheek. Then Fitz’s mind caught up with him, and he realised that that was a kiss - this strange man was kissing his cheek in public! - but it was over as soon as it had begun. The Doctor had let go of him and taken Samantha’s hand instead. ‘Supper’s at 7.30 - be home by then.’ Then he sat off at a run, dragging the girl after him. She looked over her shoulder and smiled in parting. He stared after them. _He said “home”_ , he thought. _Home!_ Then he put his hand to his cheek, where only moments ago, the Doctor had pressed his lips. For one dizzy moment, he wondered if this was not an awful idea, and he should go back to Hoxton and forget about it. Then he realised that it was too late. There had been something in the way the word “home” had made him feel and how that kiss had burned his skin which had already made the decision for him.

***

The word “home” echoed through his mind the next few days, as he started to explore the house and got to know the routines of the other two inhabitants. It was not until two days later, one morning when the sun shone through the windows and summer was in the air, when the Doctor lead him out of the backdoor, into the narrow garden. It was flanked by bushes on the far side, and with brick walls on the two others.

‘No one can see in,’ the Doctor said and looked around it lovingly. ‘It’s our secret garden.’ Fitz followed his step, seeing not a garden but rather the Doctor’s sanctuary in the world. There was a lilac bush in the far corner, a patch reserved for herbs and closest to the house, carefully tended flowerbeds. The scent of honeysuckle hung in the air.

‘I see you like begonias,’ he observed and crossed to one of the flowerbeds.

‘I save them,’ the Doctor said simply. Fitz thought of his odd way of describing him as a dying flower that first time they met. ‘I grow herbs as well - over here.’ Fitz followed him and watched him as he crouched to touch the wild thyme. It was odd to see a man in such fine clothes in a garden, but something about him made him look particularly natural in this scenery. At once when he stepped out of the house, his face had lit up, like a pious man in a church, and there was something venerate with how he touched the herbs. ‘They usually die over the winters, but...’ He looked rather melancholy for a moment, and then rose again. ‘Now, the vegetable garden.’ Reaching out, he took Fitz’s hand and before he had time to tear it out of his grip, he lead him down the garden path. They went through a small opening in the bushes furthest away and down the twitten outside until they reached a gate in the surrounding hedge. Beyond it lay a small enclosure, in which a garden sprouted. Fitz could see carrots and potatoes, and heavy pea-shells hanging from the sticks it climbed.

‘It’s not very well maintained,’ the Doctor admitted, and sounded a little embarrassed. ‘There’s not much that grows yet...’

‘Shouldn’t be much more work to get it in shape,’ Fitz mused. ‘If there’s the money for it, we could grow pumpkins.’ The Doctor smiled widely.

‘It could be your piece of work for the household,’ he said. ‘And if you feel like working the garden by the house, then please do.’

‘Thanks,’ Fitz answered and smiled at him, then spotted something. ‘Why aren’t you wearing shoes?’

‘Sometimes they don’t fit,’ the Doctor said simply. Fitz thought of mentioning to him that there were nettles in the grass, but he did not seem to care. As they turned from the garden, he walked straight over them, the spring in his step never failing.

***

Although getting to the market where he manned the stall took much longer, moving to Elsworthy Road soon turned out to have been a very good thing. While his landlady in Hoxton usually badgered him about rent days in advance, the Doctor did not even tell him what the rent was; Fitz was rather shocked to realise that he had not thought to ask of the rent either. It took him over a week before decided that the person to ask was not the otherworldly landlord, but Samantha. He found her in the living room; the purple interior of the room made it glow when the sun fell through the window. She was sitting in the sofa, busy sewing the hem of a dress. When he entered, she glanced up and smiled.

‘How are you settling in?’ she asked and took a pin from her collar, where she had a long row of them ready to be used.

‘Very well, thanks,’ he said as he sat down in the same armchair where he had sat on his first visit. ‘Is it for you?’

‘This?’ she lifted the cloth she was working with and shook her head. ‘No. I take in sewing occasionally. Something to keep me busy.’

‘I guess the Doctor doesn’t have a regular job,’ Fitz said, trying to sound casual, but she seemed to understand what he was referring to. She sighed a little and said:

‘His health prevents it.’ Fitz shifted, feeling bad about making her downcast.

‘I thought he might write, or something,’ he tried. ‘He looks a bit like a poet, and he certainly has a way of words.’ She smiled to herself and continued to work on the hem.

‘He sometimes did,’ she reminisced. ‘His doctor didn’t approve - he thought it brought on his episodes. He used to have a dream diary, I know, and I think that some of it actually was in verse. Perhaps he still keeps it.’ She removed a pin and pushed it into her collar. ‘He even illustrated it - drew pictures of the things he thought he saw,’ she said. ‘He showed them to me sometimes. Many of them very beautiful... some quite grotesque.’ Her hands fell, and she stared into nothingness. Fitz watched her, and suddenly got the feeling that there was something more to this girl, sitting in a sea of lace and cloth with a thimble between her fingers. There was some hidden pain, shadows in her face not quite her own.

‘Can I ask something?’ he said slowly. The spell broke and she raised her head, nodding. ‘His, eum... condition. Is it something new?’ She averted her eyes, as if from modesty.

‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s been like that since I met him. They knew him at the... institution even then.’ Fitz felt a sudden pity for her, who did not dare to use the word “asylum”. It seemed like an attempt at denial. ‘They have a name for it. Dementia praecox, I think.’

‘Yes, that’s what it’s called,’ he said. It had been that very disease which his mother had suffered from, according to the doctors, not possession of the devil, as she had claimed. Samantha pressed her lips together resolutely.

‘Isn’t it odd, putting a tag on it like that?’ she asked. ‘If they name it, then...’ She trailed off. Fitz guessed by the look of disgust on her face that what she had meant to say was something like, _if they name it, then there is no way to deny it. If they name it, then it can’t be put down to some passing fancy._ By the way she spoke of the Doctor, Fitz gathered that she had known him for a matter of years. It seemed curious that she would still want to deny that something was wrong. Perhaps it was part of her innocent nature - that the Doctor had episodes was one thing, that he was a diagnosed and labeled madman quite another.

She seemed to take his silence for skepticism, because now she looked up and said:

‘Most of the time, he’s as meek as a lamb. He’d never hurt anyone.’ She hesitated, as if there were exceptions; Fitz wondered briefly if she had been the victim of any violent tantrums or some odd indecent whim, but her face held no contempt, only worry. perhaps the Doctor’s instability had driven him to threaten to turn his hand on himself. Samantha swallowed to collect herself, and said: ‘He’s got a... a lively imagination, that’s all, and sometimes it gets out of hand. It’s like this world scares him. As if he forgets what it’s like.’ Then she looked up, almost accusingly, and said: ‘He’s a very good man.’

‘I never thought anything else,’ he assured her. She smiled at him.

‘I think he’s fond of you,’ she admitted. ‘That’s very good. It’s too seldom he meets people who are as kind to him as you were. And he appreciates that you call him Doctor. He likes when people do that.’ He smiled back, and decided that now was not the time to ask about where he had gotten the nickname. Samantha started looking over the stitches of the work when Fitz asked:

‘What of his family?’ She glanced up from her work.

‘He doesn’t have one,’ she said after the kind of pause which only precedes delicate euphemisms.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I had assumed... with this house...’ Fitz had guessed that the Doctor was from a wealthy family, perhaps one which did not want to be associated with him and in return for his absence had set him up with this house and an allowance. Besides, there were the fees for the asylum; the only way Fitz’s mother had been able to be accommodated in the place had been with the help of a kindly rich gentleman who occasionally sponsored impoverished widows in need of such care.

Samantha seemed to understand that he was referring to the delicate question of money, and explained:

‘There’s a lady philanthropist - Mrs Wildthyme - who sees to his financial needs. Has for years, apparently. She comes for dinner occasionally, probably to make sure that he’s still worth sponsoring.’ She thought about it and then admitted: ‘She’s a bit odd as well, actually. A huge lady, and she wears the most ghastly dresses...’ Then she smiled. ‘But she seems to like the Doctor, and she has helped him much.’ Suddenly Samantha seemed to remember herself and laughed. ‘Listen at me, prattling on! Sorry, did you come to ask me something?’

‘Well, in a way,’ Fitz said. ‘The Doctor isn’t the most practical of people, so... What is the rent for the room?’

‘Oh,’ she said, looking a bit surprised, then grew businesslike. ‘Yes. The Doctor is not particularly good with money, but what he is supposed to charge, if he ever remembers it, is twelve shillings a week, plus some help around the house.’ Fitz had to bite the inside of his cheek when she said the price. His room in Hoxton had cost him four shillings a week, and Mrs Simms only paid him twenty. The remaining eight shillings would barely be enough for food, and that was not counting the transport costs to the market...

‘Fitz?’ He looked up, and realised that Samantha had pushed the dress aside and leaned in. She watched him good-naturedly, and then said: ‘He won’t notice if you pay a little less.’

‘No,’ Fitz said quickly. ‘I’ll pay it - it’s fine, I’ll... it’s fine.’

‘Probably he wouldn’t even ask for rent if I didn’t remind him,’ she admitted. Then she bit her lip and said: ‘Please don’t reconsider just because of money. It’d break his heart.’

‘I don’t need charity,’ he said, and only realised how sharply he had spoken when she flinched back. They sat in silence for a long time, until Samantha spoke again, her voice suddenly authoritative.

‘Eight shillings, and you’re in charge of buying food from the market, which I will give you money for out of the household funds for. In addition, you’ll do whatever chores the Doctor thinks need doing. Has he given you any yet?’

‘Yes, the vegetable garden,’ Fitz said. ‘He thought it needed a bit of work.’

‘Well, if we grow our own vegetables, that would be splendid,’ Samantha said.

‘He said I could work the house garden too, if I liked, but I don’t think that was an actual chore.’ That wiped out Samantha’s smile, and instead she stared at him in disbelief.

‘The garden?’ she repeated incredulously.

‘Eum, yes,’ he said. ‘Is that a problem?’

‘The _Doctor_ said you could work the _garden_?’ she said, bobbing her head up and down in emphasis.

‘Yes.’ She made a little surprised sound. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘The Doctor doesn’t let _anyone_ work the garden,’ Samantha explained. At that moment, there were footsteps in the stairs. ‘Doctor!’ she shouted, and soon the Doctor appeared in the doorway. She turned to face him and asked: ‘Have you said Fitz can tend the garden?’

‘Yes,’ the Doctor said cheerily and smiled at Fitz, who smiled back uncertainly, not understanding what had upset Samantha so.

‘You barely let me _into_ it!’ she exclaimed. That made Fitz look from her to the Doctor, suddenly wondering at the significance of the garden. The Doctor just shrugged and said:

‘You’d end up stepping on the herbs. I think Fitz will do a good job looking after my begonias, if I can’t. That’s all.’ Samantha rolled her eyes, while the Doctor smiled at Fitz and then with a wink left the room again. They looked after him, and then Samantha looked at him and said:

‘Well?’

‘Eight shillings, groceries, garden, whatever else the Doctor needs to have done,’ he said. She smiled.

‘Good.’ Then she settled back in the sofa to continue with her sewing. As he left her to her work, he pondered the oddities of the household. If the Doctor had a philanthropist pay for his living, surely he had the money to employ staff? Instead, they seemed to have split the chores between the three of them - he knew that Samantha arranged the laundry to be taken away once a week and she did much of the cleaning, although Fitz had already decided to help her with that. However, the Doctor did much of the cooking, with Samantha’s help. He considered if the Doctor had some odd religious ideas, but there were no crosses in the house, he said no prayer before meals and he had never said anything to make him seem pious. It was Samantha who was the dedicated church-goer, although sometimes the Doctor would follow her. He fell back to his pet theory, which he had developed over the past week, that the Doctor was some kind of socialist intellectual. He had not been able to find anything in the library to support this, but it would explain how the man seemed to lack all concepts of conventional values. He did not believe in having servants - he saw nothing offensive with calling a young, decent woman his companion, and while most well-to-do gentlemen would treat Fitz with disdain because of his inexpensive clothes and his German surname, he spoke to him in such a relaxed manner that it verged on flirtatious. There was something sympathetically unbourgeois about his credo, dictated by no-one other than himself. Fitz stopped in the door to the garden, realising that he had forgotten how it felt to live with other people. Now, he encountered the world outside his own, dull life in this odd little household in Camden. Taking in the sunkissed lilac and the smell of honeysuckle, he thought that this was worth the full twelve shillings. When the Doctor looked from where he kneeled by his herb garden and smiled at him, he changed his mind. It was probably worth all his wages, if they asked for them.


	2. Chapter 2

The Doctor was a passionate man. That much had been obvious when Fitz had moved into the house in Primrose Hill, but he did not grasped the full extent of it until much later. His landlord was not unlike a child in his excitement; he had his obsessions, and anything which did not tickle his fancy seemed not to exist for him. He loved his garden and his flowers, his library and his books, although he seldom seemed to sit down to read. There seemed to be so much fiction in his head already that Fitz could not blame him. The Doctor had explained some aspects of his fantasy world, which he nevertheless seemed to believe was real. Fitz did not quite follow his descriptions - there was a magic box and different worlds which the Doctor would travel between. It all sounded like some penny-dreadful, but the Doctor was absolutely adamant that it was true. Samantha urged Fitz not to encourage the delusions, least they became impenetrable and made him lapse into an episode, but he could not stop the Doctor from speaking of them, when he seemed so happy to describe them to him. He guessed that to their landlord, this was such an integral part of his life that any acquaintance had to hear about it. Fitz did not care that it was probably a symptom of his madness. Even if he did not understand the stories, they held an enigmatic force similar to the Doctor’s own. In a way, he admired the Doctor’s diligent escapism. Sometimes in the evenings if he looked out of his window, he would see the Doctor lying spread-eagled in the grass, watching the stars with a smile on his face. He wondered what that man saw, because it seemed like it was more than just specks of light.

One of the Doctor’s more specific passions did not become apparent until almost two months after Fitz had moved into the house. When he came home one Friday, Sam met him in the door, an apron tied over her dress and a smile on her face.

‘You haven’t made any plans for tomorrow, have you?’ she asked and took his coat from him. ‘It is your day off, isn’t it?’

‘Hadn’t planned anything in particular,’ he said, a little surprised at her sudden willingness to serve. She usually did not act the maid, even if she was always pleasant.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘The Doctor’s taking us to the fun fair. He’s not going to take no for an answer.’ There was a happy shout from the kitchen, and Fitz heard the Doctor bounding through the house. ‘I warned you,’ she said with an entertained smile just as the Doctor appeared and launched himself at Fitz.

‘There’s a fair tomorrow - here on Primrose Hill! You must come with us, Fitz, you simply must,’ he said, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him.

‘If you say so,’ Fitz answered and shrugged off his grip. ‘Calm down, Doctor...’ The man was jumping up and down on the spot, caught up in his own emotional excitement.

‘Doctor, come sit down,’ Samantha said softly and took his arm. ‘You shouldn’t agitate yourself...’

‘Fitz said he’d come to the fair with us, Sam! It’ll be an adventure!’ Fitz heard the Doctor say as Samantha lead him into the kitchen. He smiled to himself, thinking of the Doctor’s childish glee, which was so endearing. When he came into the kitchen, he saw the Doctor was sitting by the table, while Samantha was preparing dinner. He caught Fitz’s eye, grinned at him and, when he came close enough, extended a hand. Fitz hesitated for a moment, and then reached out to meet his. He had expected it to become a hand-shake or a squeeze, but instead, the Doctor’s lean fingers closed around his and pulled his hand closer, almost sending him off balance. Then the Doctor planted a kiss on the back of his hand, so hard that Fitz wondered if he would change his mind and bite him instead. When he let it go, he smiled innocently, as if none of it had happened. Fitz stood frozen, returning his gaze but not his smile. Did he understand the implications of what he did? Surely he could not - would he do it if he did? It was probably just an example of his eccentricities, or some aspect of his odd personality.

The Doctor tilted his head questioningly, and Fitz shook himself mentally. He forced himself to smile and nod at him, and went to help Samantha with dinner.

***

Early next morning, the Doctor was charging through the house, as if deliberately making as much noise as possible. The racket which woke Fitz sounded like a stick being drawn over all the doors as the perpetrator ran along the corridor. He groaned and turned onto his other side, but smiled to himself as he heard the Doctor shouting his nickname for Samantha to wake her up. He had never seen (or indeed heard) the man so excited - it was both touching and unnerving. He was acting like a child, which was not natural for a grown man. Then again, little of what the Doctor did was common, and not much of it could be called strictly natural. As Fitz got out of bed, he reflected that this was not how he had imagined living with a frequenter of a mental asylum would be. It was surprisingly pleasant. Absentmindedly he rubbed the back of his right hand where the Doctor had kissed it so forcefully last evening. After he had let him go the Doctor had acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Fitz had found it unsettling, simply because he could not imagine the Doctor’s reasoning behind it. It must simply be his (albeit slightly skewed) way of showing appreciation. He seemed so innocent (and if it were not apparent that this man was quite intelligent, Fitz would say simple-minded) that he was probably unaware of any implication in his actions. A lot of the time it seemed as if the Doctor was not really mad, but rather quite eccentric. Fitz wondered, as many times before, if the past two months had been a particularly good time, or if the Doctor’s illness only manifested itself very occasionally. It was hard to imagine the man now bounding up the stairs and beating on his door, asking him excitedly to get ready, to be in any state like the one he had seen him in during that first encounter.

It was after noon when they left the house, the Doctor taking them both by the arm and urging them on. The fair manifested itself as a blur of colours at first, and then Fitz could see the stalls, the tents and the flags. He heard horn music from somewhere, and the shouts of the carnival workers, calling people to their sideshows. The banners caught in the wind and the cloth slapped against the flag poles, adding another layer of sound to the gathering. The big sign suspended over the entrance proclaimed: “ _DREAMLAND FAIR_ ”.

The Doctor did not let go of his tenants until they reached the entrance, where he presented the gangly, big-nosed man manning the booth with a handful of coins; Fitz suspected he had not even counted them. He did not comment, not wanting to sound tight-fisted, but he thought that even if he had, the Doctor would just have laughed and shrugged. It seemed as if his mood was reflected in the colours and the sounds of the fair, and when they stepped in and found themselves surrounded by it, he laughed, spun Samantha around and gave Fitz a one-armed hug.

‘Where do we start?’ he asked as he pulled away, grinning from ear to ear. The wind caught in his auburn hair and made it spread around his head like a halo. ‘The carousels! Come on!’

They had to run to keep up with him, and were both out of breath when they reached the carousel with its brightly painted horses. The Doctor offered Samantha his hand and helped her sit on one, and then grinned at Fitz and nodded at another free horse behind as he paid the keeper of the carousel. The Doctor took a horse in the outer circle, and soon enough the machinery of the carousel creaked and set them in motion. The painted horses started to move up and down leisurely, and Fitz grabbed the pole in surprise. He glanced over to the Doctor, wondering if he had the sense to hold on, and was shocked at what he saw.

‘Doctor!’ he shouted in alarm. The Doctor did have hold of the pole, but instead of sitting up properly, he was leaning back with his arms were straight. His head was thrown back, and his locks hung from his hair like a rain of gold. Fitz felt his heart in his throat at the thought of what might happen if his grip slipped and he fell headfirst off the moving carousel, even if it was not going particularly fast. ‘Be careful!’

‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’ the Doctor answered and let go with one hand. His upper body swung threateningly to the side and Fitz thought he saw the fingers of his other hand go white. The Doctor just laughed at his horrified face and flung back his head again. His face took on an expression of bliss, as if even the slow grinding of a fun-fair carousel was releasing him from old worries. Fitz watched the closed eyes and the half parted lip, his hair billowing around his head. It reminded him of a print he had once seen, depicting some saint caught in divine rapture. It was equal parts beautiful and unsettling, as if emotion that high were harmful.

The carousel ride was short, and when it ground to a stop the Doctor leapt off his horse with ease and lifted Samantha down. She seemed not to have noticed the Doctor’s dangerous behaviour during the ride, and Fitz decided not to mention it, not wanting her to worry. Besides, nothing had happened, so there was no need to bring it up.

The Doctor bought them all candy-floss, which they ate while watching a man with abnormally long arms juggle. While they stood there, Fitz noticed a midget dressed up as a clown. He could not help but stare, from the long-armed juggler to the clown dwarf. Evidently there was a band of freaks who were part of the fair. He had only been to a freak-show once, and he had been so little that he blamed much of the strangeness he remembered on his own imagination. When they finished their candy-floss and continued through the crowd, he realised that this was not the case. They navigated between the tents where announcers shouted out what there was to see.

‘Fortuna and Perpetua - two ladies, one body! Come inside and see the two sisters dance the mystic dances of India!’

‘Step up and see the mighty sword-swallower of the North!’

‘Roll up, roll up! The strongest man in the Empire!’

On Samantha’s request, they forwent the dancing siamese twins and went to see the strong man instead, who turned out to be a giant rather than a man. The tent he performed in was particularly high-roofed because of it. Fitz found his tricks of lifting weights and bending metal bars rather intimidating, so when the giant asked for a lady volunteer and Samantha started putting her hand up, he attempted to stop her. The Doctor, however, nodded vigorously and shuffled over so that she could pass. Then he turned to Fitz and squeezed his arm.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, so softly that it almost disappeared in the murmur of the crowd. ‘He knows what he’s doing.’ Fitz sighed in resignation and saw, when he looked back at the stage, that the giant was directing Samantha to sit in a chair with handles on each side. She nodded and sat down, looking apprehensive at the audience’s eyes on her.

‘Just hold on, miss,’ the giant said gruffly, bent down and grabbed the handles. Fitz saw how Samantha’s hands closed around the arm-rests, and then a moment later the chair was lifted high up into the air. A small scream escaped her, and the Doctor’s grip around Fitz’s arm tightened momentarily, but then she laughed. The giant was holding the chair over his head, his arms completely straight. Samantha was staring down at them in awe and then carefully let go of one of the arm-rests. Slowly, slowly, she stretched up her arm, until she spread her hand against the tent’s ceiling. The audience sucked in a breath, as if they were one entity, and then burst into applause. The giant lowered the chair and bowed to Samantha, who looked almost like Thumbelina in comparison, especially when he took her hand in his and kissed it. When she joined them again, the Doctor stretched out his arms towards her and she accepted the embrace.

‘You’re wonderfully brave, Sam,’ he said. ‘Now it’s Fitz’s turn to do something spectacular.’

‘Don’t make me arm-wrestle with him,’ Fitz said, and the Doctor laughed.

‘It was better than the carousel,’ Samantha confided as they left the tent.

‘He should’ve strapped you in that chair,’ Fitz pointed out.

‘He’s probably done it a hundred times before,’ the Doctor said. ‘He knew very well what he was...’ The sentence was left unfinished as the Doctor stopped in his stride. When Fitz looked at him, he saw that the blood had drained from his face and he had gone ghastly pale. His eyes had a faraway look in them.

‘Doctor?’ Fitz said and reached out to touch his arm, but the Doctor started walking quickly through the crowd, without paying any attention to if they were following him. Fitz turned to Samantha, who met his gaze with worry. She took hold of his arm, so they would not lose each other in the crowd, and set off in the direction the Doctor had gone. Fitz saw the familiar auburn head of hair ducking into a tent a while ahead.

‘This way,’ Fitz said and took Samantha’s hand. He lead her through the crowd, all the time keeping his eyes on the tent so that he would not mix it up with the others. Only when they were a few yards away could he tell which of the announcers belonged to that.

‘Come and see the lady of the deep! Half fish - half human! Step right up and see the mermaid!’ When he spotted Fitz and Samantha he put his hand in his pocket and jangled the coins in it, as he asked: ‘Come to see the mermaid, sir?’ Fitz dug in his pockets, trying to find some money, but was interrupted by a shriek from within the tent. It was high-pitched and distraught, but undoubtedly the Doctor’s. Fitz left his search and pushed past the man, who shouted for him to stop and ran after him.

The inside of the tent was only lit by two oil-lamps on either side of the exhibit, a mummified creature in a glass-case, and a handful of spectators were huddled at the other side of the tent. In the middle stood a circus worker, probably there to control the audience, and the Doctor, holding the man by the collar.

‘You said there was a mermaid!’ he shrieked and shook the man. ‘ _That_ -’ he relinquished his grip for a moment to point at the thing in the glass-case ‘-is a monkey and a fish sewn together. That’s not a mermaid! That’s an _insult_!’ The announcer stepped forward hesitantly.

‘Sir, please step outside, and we can discuss this...’ The Doctor’s head shot up and he stared at him. Fitz instinctively took a step back; there was something wrong with his gaze.

‘Where is the mermaid?’ he said forcefully. No-one answered, and he once again shook the circus worker in his grip. ‘Where is she?’ he shrieked. ‘ _Where_?’ The announcer took his chance and launched himself against the Doctor, tackling him. They almost pulled the circus-worker with him, but he let go of his collar before the man lost his footing. As soon as they hit the ground the announcer got to his feet, looking down in disgust at the Doctor. He lay slumped for a long moment and then raised his head, looking around him in a bewildered manner. Fitz approached and fell to his knees beside him.

‘Doctor?’ The man on the ground shivered and blinked in shock.

‘Where is she?’ he whispered, as a tear broke loose of his eyelashes and trailed down his cheek.

‘You,’ the announcer said loudly; Fitz understood that he was addressing him, but did not look up. Instead he squeezed the Doctor’s shoulder, willing him to look at him. He just stared blankly into nothingness, weeping silently. ‘Get him out of here. He’s not welcome.’

‘Doctor?’ Fitz said, trying to catch his eye. ‘Please, Doctor...’ The Doctor just shut his eyes and whimpered.

‘Did you hear me?’ the announcer shouted. ‘Get him out!’ Fitz looked up, suddenly not able to curb his anger.

‘Shut up - can’t you see he’s not well, you idiot?’ he said back. The announcer almost growled.

‘Get him out of here, I said,’ he said under his breath. Fitz scowled at him, but turned back to the Doctor.

‘Hey, Doctor, come on,’ he said and took hold of his arm. ‘Can you get up?’ The Doctor turned his head away, still crying, but sat up slowly and let Fitz help him to his feet. When he stood up, he stumbled a little, and Fitz grabbed his arm harder. ‘Time to go home,’ he said quietly and lead him out, aware of the audience and the circus people staring after them.

The sunlight outside was blinding after the semidarkness of the tent. Samantha, who had been waiting outside, rushed to them when they appeared in the opening.

‘What happened?’ she said anxiously and grabbed the Doctor’s free arm. His head was still hanging, his face obscured by his hair. Fitz wondered if it was because he was still listless after his outburst, or if he was trying to hide the trails of tears from Samantha.

‘Just a silly squabble,’ he said, trying to assure her, even if he knew it did not sound very persuasive. ‘Let’s go home.’

Fitz half-lead the Doctor most of the way back, while Samantha hovered at his side, watching him worriedly. When they were finally in sight of the house, the Doctor pulled himself loose and straightened up. His face was grim and tear-stained when he pushed the hair out of his eyes. They approached the house in silence, and the Doctor unlocked the door wordlessly and proceeded to the kitchen. At last he sat down and his face fell again.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. He squeezed his eyes closed again, as if to keep himself from crying, and Samantha rushed to his side, crouching down and taking his hand.

‘Don’t be - it’ll be fine,’ she attempted, but it came out weak and Fitz did not think it really helped. He made tea for them while Samantha lead the Doctor out to his whicker-chair in the garden. She sat beside him, while Fitz sat on the door-step. They did not speak, only conscious of the Doctor’s shallow sobs which had not yet subsided. At last he said:

‘We were having such a lovely time...’ Fitz put his cup down on the ground and reached out. He could just about touch his arm. To his surprise, the Doctor caught his fingers and pressed them, even if he did not look at him.

‘We’ll go next time,’ Fitz said. He saw the Doctor nod minutely, but then his grip on his fingers slipped and he hissed in pain. Samantha was suddenly on her feet, grabbing his shoulders.

‘You’ve agitated yourself, Doctor,’ she said worriedly. ‘You should rest.’

‘I guess you’re right,’ he said wearily, but then added: ‘I want to stay here.’ Samantha bit her lip and then nodded and went to fetch a foot-stool and a blanket for him. Fitz took the book with oriental stories he had been reading and brought it down to the garden, placing it on the table beside the Doctor. He smiled weakly; Fitz knew that he would not do any reading. Samantha and he settled in the kitchen, where they could see the Doctor from the window. They did not speak, only stared at their tea cups and looked out into the garden, where their landlord was resting his head against the chair, as if asleep.

When the sun started to set, Samantha made him come inside and sit in the kitchen, while she made an early supper. The Doctor did not eat much, but seemed calmer. He stayed at the table after finishing the little soup he had accepted, and when Samantha started clearing the table, he stood up, although to Fitz’s eye not without difficulty, and said:

‘I think it’s time for bed. These funny-turns are exhausting.’ Samantha put down the plate she had just lifted and crossed the table to him. She smiled briefly and accepted a kiss on the cheek from him. Then the Doctor squeezed Fitz’s shoulder. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered and, nodding to them both, he left. When Fitz was certain that he had gone upstairs, he asked:

‘Is he alright?’ Samantha nodded, but her smile was mirthless.

‘It’s just melancholia,’ she said with a shrug. ‘It happens sometimes.’ To Fitz, it had seemed like a little more than melancholia in the tent. The Doctor had given up his sense of reality for some kind of delusion, and the fact that he had collapsed when it had passed did not bode well. ‘When he’s like that, all we can do is humour him - it helps.’ He nodded, still worried. Samantha seemed to notice, because she interrupted her chore and came to stand beside him. ‘It sometimes happens. He’ll be better in the morning.’

‘You know best,’ he agreed and smiled at her. ‘You’ve seen it before, I guess.’ She nodded, biting her lip, as if she wished that that was not the case. ‘I’ll help you with the dishes,’ he said suddenly, and she laughed softly. They cleared up in silence, confident that anything sinister had been averted.

***

‘Fitz!’ The shout reached him through his dream, where the carousel horses had broken lose and were charging over the hill. Suddenly Fitz found himself awake in his bed, jerked out of the saddle of the mechanical steed. The first disorientated moment turned sharp at the banging on his door. ‘Fitz! You need to wake up! It’s the Doctor!’ Suddenly wide awake, he jumped out of bed and rushed over to the door. Samantha was standing outside, her face chalk-white in the darkness.

‘What’s happened?’ he asked.

‘The Doctor’s not in his room, and not in the garden either,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I was awake, and thought I heard a noise, so I got up to make sure he was alright...’ Her voice broke and she pressed a hand against her mouth to quench a sob.

‘Right - calm down,’ he said, trying to sound reassuring at the same time as fear made him go cold inside. ‘We’ll find him.’ He left the door and grabbed the trousers he had worn during the day to put them on, not even caring if Samantha was averting her eyes or not. ‘Have you checked the vegetable garden?’

‘No - I didn’t dare go out that far,’ she said. He understood her to some extent - he could not imagine her leaving the house in just her nightgown - but it did not seem like the ideal time to be ladylike.

‘I’ll check,’ he said as they left his room and went downstairs. ‘What about the garden shed?’

‘I only peered in,’ she admitted.

‘Look there, and around the house, while I check the vegetable garden,’ Fitz said and headed for the door before waiting for an acknowledgement. The night cold surprised him, and as he drew his coat around his night-shirt, he hoped that he would not find the Doctor at the vegetable garden, but that Samantha would have found him when he got back. It had been raining, and it still hung in the air - the thought of the Doctor being lost in weather like this was worrying. The twittens around the house were eery in the darkness, and as Fitz reached the vegetable patch, he only saw shadows there. He walked around the garden, making sure that none were solid, and then turned back. Samantha was standing in the doorway, wringing her hands when he returned.

‘I can’t find him either,’ she said, barely staving off tears.

‘Blast,’ Fitz swore, keeping himself from saying anything worse in front of her. ‘Has this happened before?’

‘Sometimes he goes wandering,’ she admitted, ‘but yesterday...’ Suddenly her eyes grew with realisation. ‘He may have gone back to the fair,’ she said.

‘Do you think so?’ Fitz asked and went into the porch. The Doctor’s velvet coat was still on its hanger, and his shoes were placed on it.

‘There was something which agitated him there,’ she said, sounding uncertain.

‘It’s the best we have,’ Fitz said. ‘Stay up, in case he comes back.’

‘Of course,’ Samantha said, swallowing. He stopped his step and looked her in the eye.

‘We’ll find him,’ he said emphatically. She nodded half-heartedly, but he did not have time to assure her more. Instead, he turned and left the house.

As he walked towards Primrose Hill, a light rain started up again, enough to make his skin uncomfortably moist, but not enough to make him properly wet. He hurried his step, worried what would happen if he found the Doctor, and if he did not. He followed the way they had gone the day before, but he started wondering if he had taken a wrong-turn, because he could not see the fair. He stopped and looked around. There was a lamp-post a little way away, and when he looked closer, he realised that from it hung a banner, carelessly left behind. The fair must have left in the evening - the Doctor’s insistence of going on Saturday must have been because they were only scheduled to stay that day. Then this was the right place, and if Samantha had been right...

‘Doctor?’ he shouted. As he had thought, there was no answer. He started walking aimlessly, scanning the field before him and shouting for him. He was just about to give up when he thought he spotted movement in the darkness. The clouds shifted a little and let through a burst of moonlight. There was a figure kneeling in the mud only a hundred yards from him. ‘Doctor!’ He set off at a run, and when he finally reached it he slipped and fell to his knees. Not minding how the mud instantly started leaking through his trousers, he reached out for the person in front of him. ‘Doctor, it’s me - it’s Fitz. Are you alright?’ The moon had disappeared and had plunged them into near-darkness, so Fitz barely saw anything, but he could make out the familiar outlines of his face, and he felt his long hair, drenched in the rain, under his fingers. His cheeks were deathly cold. ‘Doctor, say something!’ he commanded. Beyond the shadows which separated them, the Doctor’s eyes moved.

‘Where is she?’ he asked piteously. ‘Where have they taken her?’

‘It’s alright,’ Fitz said quickly and, edging closer, wrapped his arms around him. The Doctor let him hold him, but did not answer the embrace, as if he did not notice it. ‘It’s all fine.’ It was a lie, of course - it was the middle of the night and it was cold and wet and the Doctor was shaking horribly, having wandered outside only in his nightshirt... ‘Here,’ Fitz said, letting him go and unbuttoning the coat. ‘Put this on. We need to get you home.’ Making the Doctor put his arms into the sleeves was harder than he had expected, but when the coat was finally buttoned he could easily make him stand. ‘Come on,’ Fitz coaxed, taking his hand and grabbing his arm to make him follow.

‘I can’t go,’ the Doctor said urgently. ‘You don’t understand - it’s important...’

‘You’re not thinking straight, Doctor,’ Fitz said.

‘You don’t know about the threat coming!’ the Doctor shouted. Fitz suddenly remembered that sometimes, the only way to get through to his mother had been to play along.

‘We’ll deal with it,’ he said assuringly. ‘You know about it, and you can tell me, and we’ll let the police know and they will sort it out...’

‘The police won’t understand,’ he insisted. ‘Fitz, reality is shattering! If we don’t catch up with the man with the mirrors... I have to do it myself...’

‘Let’s get back to the house and get you ready to deal with it, then,’ Fitz said. He could sense the Doctor watching him, considering this, and then he nodded in acceptance.

Fitz had not anticipated that it would be so hard to lead him home. The ground of the field was muddy and slippery, and several times, the Doctor refused to go further and had to be cajoled or tricked into continuing. When they reached their street, the Doctor started stumbling, and in the gaslight, Fitz realised how pale he was. His hands were encrusted with mud, as were his bare legs, which made him look horrifically vulnerable. Fitz’s coat was too long for him and would have looked comical in any other circumstance, but now there was nothing funny about the Doctor’s appearance. His hair was plastered to his face from the rain, his eyes seemed even paler than usual and the mud on his cheeks was cracking with the tears running down them. He was trembling so much that Fitz feared he would go into convulsions, and his balance was failing. As he pushed the door open, Fitz was shouting for help. Samantha near screamed when she saw them in the porch, but she still had the presence of mind to put the Doctor’s free arm around her shoulders and help him into the house. The stairs were too narrow for the three of them; Fitz considered it for a moment, and then told Samantha:

‘Get blankets and a hot-water bottle - I’ll get him up.’ She nodded and rushed off to the kitchen, looking over her shoulder at them. Fitz coaxed the Doctor up half the steps, until suddenly his knees buckled. For a moment he thought he would lose his balance, but then managed to grab the banister and stop the Doctor from falling. Deciding to risk it, he put his other arm behind his knees and lifted him. He was actually too heavy to be lifted in such a way, but Fitz managed to carry him up the stairs and then half-drag, half-lead him to the bed. He fell onto it limply, and he made no protest when Fitz rolled him over onto his back. ‘Doctor, can you hear me?’ he asked and cupped his face in his hands. The Doctor opened his eyes, but he thought that even if he looked at him, he could not see him. He did not respond as Fitz unbuttoned the coat and took it off him, nor when he wrestled him out of the soaked night-shirt. Using the water in the pitcher on the dressing-table and a wash-towel, Fitz managed to clean the worst of the mud off his legs, hands and face, and dry his hair. He tried not to dwell on how cold his skin was. When he finally helped him into a new night-shirt, the Doctor was shaking even worse than before, and his protests when Fitz made him stand up so that he could draw back the sheets were very weak. When he had finally made him get back into bed and drawn the covers over him, he tried to tuck the blanket around his arms. In response, both the Doctor’s hands shot out and grabbed his fingers, clasping it so hard that it felt like the bones would break.

‘Fitz,’ he whispered, teeth chattering.

‘It’s alright, Doctor,’ Fitz lied assuringly.

‘I’m afraid.’ The confession struck a cord; he had not thought of that the Doctor must be just as terrified by his madness as anyone else. Impulsively, he bent down and kissed his forehead, hoping it would calm him.

‘It’s all going to be fine,’ he said, hearing Samantha approaching. When she entered, he managed to release his hand and together they added the extra blankets and the hot-water bottle. When Fitz looked back to the Doctor’s face, he saw that he had closed his eyes, but instead of looking peaceful, he seemed to be in pain.

‘We should call a doctor,’ he observed and glanced at the Doctor’s pocket-watch on the bedside table. It said ten to three. He rose. ‘There’s one living just down the street, isn’t there? I’ve seen a sign - Foreman, right?’

‘Well, yes, but...’ Samantha said, arms wrapped around herself where she sat on the bedside.

‘“But” what? He’s ill,’ Fitz insisted.

‘Doctor Foreman won’t help,’ she explained, half-choking on the words. ‘He’ll refuse.’ It took Fitz a moment to realise what she was saying.

‘He can’t refuse!’ he exclaimed and gestured at the Doctor, his breathing laboured and his skin white and clammy. ‘He’s ill. He might catch pneumonia. He might die.’

‘Doctor Foreman doesn’t care,’ she answered, just as loud. ‘He claims...’ She trailed off and looked away. ‘He doesn’t want... or dare... to treat him because of his... deformities.’

‘Deformities?’ Fitz repeated, not understanding what she meant. Samantha closed her eyes and swallowed a sob.

‘He’s... very ill,’ she said slowly, fighting to keep her voice from breaking. ‘It’s not just his episodes. There are other things too...’ He considered this, looking from the crying girl to the pale madman.

‘So we need to get doctor Smith from the asylum here,’ he concluded. She nodded. ‘We won’t be able to get hold of him until the morning at the earliest.’ He thought for a moment, and then sat down on the bed beside her, taking her hand in a way he hoped she would recognise as fraternal. ‘You know what, Samantha? Go back to bed. I’ll stay up.’

‘But he’s so weak...’ she whispered. He hushed her.

‘I’ll wake you first thing,’ he promised. ‘You’ll be no good for him if you’re this tired.’ Samantha sighed.

‘Alright,’ she said and rose.

‘I’ll take care of him,’ Fitz assured her. She nodded and started leaving, but stopped in the door.

‘Thanks,’ she said quietly and was gone. Fitz stood in the middle of the room, watching the Doctor, for a long while, then pulled the armchair over to the bedside and curled up in it. He reached out and clasped the Doctor’s cold hand in his, feeling himself drift off to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Fitz jolted awake and found himself in complete darkness. There was the sound of sobbing.

Fumbling with the gaslight on the wall, he turned it up and the hiss of light started. Now he saw the figure in the bed, curled up and shaking with sobs.

‘Doctor?’ he asked and moved closer to the bed. When he did not answer, he sat down beside him and grabbed his shoulder. ‘Doctor, what’s wrong?’ The sobs were interrupted and slowly, the man lowered his hands and turned to look at him. His face was tear-stained and pale, but his gaze was more lucid than before. ‘Doctor?’ Fitz said again. His equilibrium broke and the sobs returned. Hoping it would soothe him, Fitz lay down beside him and hugged him, as one would hug a frightened child. There was something so slight about his body that he could almost believe that that was the case.

When the Doctor stopped crying, he was the one to speak, his voice broken.

‘Why is she never there?’

‘Who?’ Fitz asked soothingly, guessing that this was part of some delusion. He had learnt that often, it was best simply to play along. The Doctor’s answer brought back the image of the child.

‘My mother,’ he whispered.

‘Why would your mother be in that field?’ he said, wondering what had truly happened to his mother. But the Doctor pulled away from his embrace and stared at him defiantly, as if he sensed that he was not being believed.

‘She wasn’t there yesterday - I looked all over,’ he explained hectically. ‘It was the wrong one. But I’ll find the right one, sooner or later...’

‘Calm down, Doctor,’ Fitz said. ‘You’re not well.’ The Doctor barked a laugh at him, almost spitting in his face.

‘Since when was I well?’ he asked savagely, eyes suddenly alight with twisted entertainment.

‘Really, I mean it,’ Fitz insisted, grabbing his shoulder. ‘I wanted to call a doctor, but Samantha said the one down the road wouldn’t come...’ The Doctor laughed once again and started rocking back and forth, rolling onto his back and then onto his side again.

‘He hates me,’ he explained, as if it were funny. ‘He thinks I’m an “abomination”. He says he won’t treat a freak.’

‘Doctor!’ Fitz exclaimed, appalled at the term. ‘Don’t call yourself that.’

The Doctor stopped his rocking and watched him with wide, mad eyes.

‘Don’t you see, Fitz?’ he said quietly. ‘I _am_ a freak.’

‘The people at that side-show yesterday were freaks. Not you.’ Perhaps he had sounded too hostile, because the Doctor’s face fell.

‘Not even they thought that,’ he said quietly, and Fitz realised he was crying once more. He tried to apologise and soothe him, but he did not heed him. He wept silently without the theatricality of before, and Fitz simply lay beside him and waited for it to pass. Finally he wiped his eyes on the back of his hand and said:

‘I’ve been looking for her since she left me.’

‘Your mother?’ Fitz asked, and he nodded. ‘What do you mean, left you?’ The Doctor smiled melancholically.

‘She was a mermaid,’ he explained simply, as if this was a completely sane thing to say. ‘She was with a sideshow. I was born there. I travelled around with them. It was all I knew - I had never seen the inside of a house. Can you imagine it, Fitz? It’s a world where there is nothing normal. That word didn’t exist. I didn’t hear it until I was nine.’

‘You lived with a freak show?’ Fitz said incredulously. ‘With... people like that?’

‘People like _me_ ,’ the Doctor said emphatically, but then hung his head. ‘But then again not like me.’ He was silent for such a long time that Fitz wondered if he had fallen asleep, but then he lifted his head again and continued. ‘They were all so beautiful. So unique. I.... I was dull.’ He shrugged. ‘I look much like other people, don’t I? The odd things are in here...’ he tapped his temple ‘...Or in here.’ He took Fitz’s hand and placed it on his chest. He could feel his heart beating madly. ‘Nothing of it _showed_. This was the only thing which marked me out.’ Frantically he pushed down the sheets and lifted up his nightshirt, as if not reflecting that he was showing him his genitals as well as his stomach, which was completely smooth. He did not have a navel. When his cramplike grip of his hand slackened, Fitz pulled down the nightshirt for him, not certain whether he would bother to do it himself. The Doctor continued speaking, oblivious at Fitz’s attempt at modesty. ‘They only put me up front a few times. “The boy born out of an egg”. “The baby angel”. They could never really come up with anything which sounded good enough.’ He let his head fall back onto the pillow, and for a long moment they simply lay there, looking at each other.

‘What happened?’ Fitz asked at last. Despite his scepticism, he had been captivated by the story.

‘I guess I was one mouth too many to feed,’ the Doctor said, sounding as if the pain of it had worn down after all these years. ‘One day she left me behind.’

‘Are you certain that was what happened?’ Fitz pressed. ‘I mean, they simply might have forgot...’ The Doctor shook his head vigorously. ‘Would you really rather imagine that your mother willfully left you behind?’

‘Do you imagine mothers to be incapable of cruelty?’ he asked, and suddenly his blue eyes pierced him with such intensity that Fitz felt like he was looking into his brain and seeing the memories of his childhood all laid out like cards on a gypsy woman’s table. ‘Besides, if she forgot me, would that not be worse? They never came back for me.’ His voice was growing hoarse with tears. ‘I kept searching. They still haven’t come back. I’ve seen the inside of so many houses now. Workhouses. Hospitals. Asylums. I want to be free of this, free of it all...’ The sobs made whatever he was saying unintelligible as his face crumbled and he brought his hands up to his head. Frightened at how he could see the madness grip him, Fitz pulled him into his arms and held him, even when one of his hands untangled itself from his hair and punched his shoulder and neck weakly. ‘Let me go, let me go,’ he heard him sob, and then it became incomprehensible again, turning it into half words and disjointed sounds. The next real words he said was, ‘don’t.’ Fitz assumed that he meant “don’t hold me”, so what came next surprised him: ‘Don’t let them take me. Keep me here, Fitz...’ The hand which had been hitting him had tangled up in his hair.

‘You’re staying,’ he said, even if the way the Doctor’s body had gone stiff and his speech incomprehensible made him think that would not happen. It struck him as odd that he had not reflected on the situation. Here he was, practically lying in bed with a madman who had no inhibitions, who asked him to hold him and to let him go within only a few minutes. He wondered why this did not daunt him. His mother’s mad tantrums had frightened him, and he had never known quite how to approach her when she was unwell; he had felt a sickly relief when she had been committed. Now, as he let the Doctor cling to him while he hushed him and stroked his hair, he felt nothing of the kind. He did not want anyone, even the most competent medic, to take him out of his arms. Why this protectiveness? How could this eccentric lunatic stir so much emotion in him? Now, in the dead of night when they were closely wrapped around each other like frightened children in a storm, he did not care. It meant little to him if he was falling for his charms or into his madness. He was content for now to hold him and whisper soothing words of comfort until the Doctor fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. Fitz himself stayed awake until dawn, stroking his auburn curls and trying to ease the catatonic rigor of his arms.

***

The early morning light filtered in from the garden and fell on Samantha’s hands, clasped around an untouched cup of tea. Fitz was sitting opposite her, weighing on his chair and staring at the invisible trajectory of the light, an unlit cigarette between his fingers. They had called for the Doctor’s doctor first thing, and now he was busy upstairs. The tenants did not speak; there was little to say. The house was unnaturally quiet.

Finally there were footsteps on the stairs, and the doctor entered the kitchen, his opera cloak slung over one arm.

‘Do you take the Doctor’s decisions when he is incapable of taking them himself?’ he asked and looked at Fitz. Samantha glared at the two men.

‘I think we both do,’ he answered hesitantly. The doctor let it pass without comment that the maid would have a say in the matter and explained:

‘He needs to be committed.’

‘ _No!_ ’ Samantha exclaimed and jumped to her feet. The doctor stared at her as if she were a hysteric.

‘Is it really necessary?’ Fitz asked, knowing it sounded feeble.

‘Absolutely necessary,’ the doctor answered. ‘His state is very worrying indeed. I have never seen him this passive before.’ As he spoke, Fitz got up and rounded the table to Samantha, taking her hand to comfort her.

‘He hates that place,’ she said weakly. By the sound of it, she had been crying the whole night. Fitz turned again to doctor Smith and, as it had fallen on him to play the voice of reason against Samantha’s voice of passion, he asked:

‘Is there any chance that we could care for him here?’

‘Would you want to have that responsibility?’ the Doctor’s doctor simply asked in return.

‘How bad is it?’ Fitz pressed.

‘I cannot guarantee that he won’t become violent, when he comes out of his stupor,’ he answered. ‘Whether against you or against himself.’

Fitz looked at the man, his noble face set in a frown. He knew that just as it did not work to reason with a madman, it did not work to reason with an alienist.

‘Take him,’ he said weakly and bit his lip as Samantha’s grip around his hand tightened. The Doctor’s doctor nodded.

‘Good.’ He left the kitchen. Samantha sat down again, a look of misery on her face.

‘I think he’s right, Samantha,’ Fitz said, trying to sound fraternal. ‘The Doctor’s too ill for us to take care of him...’

‘Do you know what they do to him in that place?’ she asked hectically, and the eyes behind the tears shone with anger. ‘Have you seen the _cells_ they keep them in?’

‘Yes, I have - I know,’ Fitz said emphatically. ‘My mother was there, remember?’ She sighed and hung her head, as if she thought he was trying to make her feel guilty and she was having nothing of it. ‘Look, Samantha,’ he said, sat down and took her hand again. ‘It’s an awful place, but it’s all there is. It’s not like treating a chest-cold. There aren’t any cough drops against madness. Besides, he’s gotten better before, hasn’t he?’

‘Has it really been because of that place?’ she queried, but she was giving in. They could hear the Doctor’s doctor ascending together with the wardens he had presumably brought with him.

‘It’s going to be alright,’ Fitz said, but was cut off by a sudden scream from upstairs. The only thing which kept him from rushing out of the kitchen and up the stairs was that it was the Doctor’s voice. They both looked up and listened to how the scream oscillated in desperation. Something - a fist, perhaps - banged against the wall in the struggle. Then the scream grew closer; Fitz realised that they were taking him downstairs. He got to his feet, not heeding Samantha’s attempt to stop him. It had been he who had sanctioned taking the Doctor away, and therefore it was his fault. He had to see him before they carted him off. While Samantha stayed in the kitchen, he went out into the hall-way and saw the wardens lead the Doctor down the stairs. They looked like little else than thugs manhandling a gentleman, only the gentleman was in his nightshirt and a straightjacket. It made him look like half a man, as if he did not have any arms. As the thugs forced him to take one step after another, he continued screaming at the top of his voice, struggling to get free. His doctor followed them, seemingly unaffected by the charade. Fitz tried to swallow the tears which guilt brought.

It happened so quickly that Fitz was not certain later in what order things had happened. The wardens had each had a strong grip of the Doctor’s shoulder and arm, to keep him with them and to make sure he did not attempt to hurl himself down the stairs. Still screaming, the Doctor lowered his head and suddenly bit into the hand on his shoulder. The warden screamed and let go, but it only awarded him a moment of freedom before his doctor shouted to the other warden, who tackled the Doctor and held him down against the steps. Doctor smith acted slowly, as if the sudden turn of events bored him. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket, surveyed it for a moment and then bent down. Fitz winced as the Doctor’s scream was muffled by the cloth being forced into his mouth. He still did not keep quiet and took to thrashing.

‘Hold down his legs,’ the doctor told him and opened his bag. Fitz wished he could look away as the man fished up a syringe, filled it and pressed it into the vein of his patient’s knee. The thrashing continued for a few more moments, then the body on the stairs went limp. ‘Get him to the wagon,’ the Doctor’s doctor said coldly as he closed his bag of tricks. He doffed his hat when passing Fitz and said, ‘good day to you, sir.’ Fitz did not answer, trying not to stare at the body of the unconscious Doctor which the wardens carried between them.

***

The next day, Fitz went to the asylum for the first time since his mother had died and the Doctor had asked him to come for tea. The nurse showed him to Doctor Smith’s office, where he was busy writing something; it took a while before he looked up and noticed his guest.

‘Ah, Mister Kreiner,’ he said when he spotted him. ‘How may I help you?’

‘I came to visit him,’ The alienist’s face fell.

‘I’m afraid that’s quite impossible,’ he said. His tone of voice, which had been so obliging at first, had turned cold.

‘Please,’ Fitz said. ‘I want to know that he is alright.’

‘He is not. Of that I can assure you,’ he answered and started shuffling papers over the desk, feigning a heavy workload to make him go away.

‘Still, I want to see him,’ Fitz insisted. The old man looked up at him pointedly.

‘He is restrained in a solitary cell,’ he explained gravely. ‘We have had to sedate him several times since he was committed. Do you believe that it would be pleasant to see him in such a state?’ They stared at each other, and at last Fitz looked away, losing the battle of wills. He sat down in the visitor’s chair and started studying the pattern of the carpet. At last he asked:

‘How is he?’

‘Very agitated,’ The Doctor’s doctor answered. ‘He tore through a straight-jacket yesterday.’ Fitz looked up sharply in disbelief. ‘Precisely,’ he said, nodding at him as if to indicate his reaction. ‘What causes special concern is of course that it will upset his physical health.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’ Fitz asked. ‘Samantha mentioned some deformity, but...’ The doctor sighed and clasped his hands together on the desk.

‘It is a very rare abnormality - unique, in fact,’ he explained. ‘Essentially, your friend the Doctor, as he calls himself, has two hearts.’

‘Two hearts?’ Fitz echoed. He remembered how the Doctor had put his hand to his chest when speaking of his freakish traits, but he had not imagined anything like that. ‘How is that even possible?’

‘The medical profession has wondered the same thing for almost thirty years,’ the doctor said. ‘What is even more surprising is that he is as healthy as he is. He seems not to have received any medical attention for it until he was nine years old, when Doctor John Bowman noticed this truly remarkable medical condition.’

‘He told me that he spent his childhood with a freak-show,’ Fitz said. ‘Is that true?’

‘It’s impossible to say,’ the doctor said with a shrug. ‘He has mentioned the story to me as well. Apparently he has always claimed that. It seems plausible enough, but considering that he is delusional about so many ways, it may have started as a convenient story which he adopted, but has since become convinced of himself. There is no record of him until when Doctor Bowman found him in a workhouse, and no one there knew him. After that, Doctor Bowman arranged for him to stay at his hospital, which he did until he ran away at the age of thirteen. He was easily found, of course, and spent most of his young years in different institutions. He was eighteen when he became a patient here.’

‘But this... deformity...’ pressed Fitz. ‘Is it dangerous?’

‘Why, naturally,’ the doctor said. ‘Mostly, his abnormal heart-rate and blood-pressure does not seem to impact his well-being much, but it seems to me that it is less natural when his body learns to accommodate to it than when it makes him ill. His hearts are certainly weaker than a normal person’s, and they must take up too much place in his chest, because his lungs are malformed as well. I think it is remarkable that he is still alive, to be perfectly honest.’ Fitz’s jaw tightened. ‘Surely you must understand, Mister Kreiner, that with his mental state being what it is in addition to such a grave heart condition, his life-expectancy is not high. He relies only on luck.’

‘He seems to have a lot of it,’ Fitz answered defiantly and started rising. The Doctor’s doctor simply said:

‘He has little else, I must admit. Not even a name.’ Fitz stopped and stared at him.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did you not know?’ the man asked. ‘When Doctor Bowman found him in that workhouse, the boy was unable to give his name. All he could say was that his mother called him Johnny, but he claimed that that was not his real name. Doctor Bowman called him that, and assigned him the surname Smith, as he needed to call the lad something, but he used to object to it strongly. Apparently he insisted on the nickname “Doctor” even then.’ He considered this and admitted: ‘I find it hard to use it myself. He has done nothing to deserve the title. His ill-health has hindered him from entering any form of proper education - everything he knows is what he has taught himself from books.’ He must have seen how Fitz furrowed his brow, because he leaned in and said: ‘Mister Kreiner, if you want my candid opinion, I think that the most likely scenario is that he was a street-urchin, quite possibly the child of a fallen women. The slums of London are filled with children who do not know their own names, because their parents are more fond of gin and whoring than their own child. I don’t know if carnies believe in last names, so perhaps they simply did not tell him, but how likely is it?’

‘Thank you for your time,’ Fitz simply said and put on his cap on again. He shook the doctor’s hand and left, trying to hide the turmoil the conversation had woken in him.

***

Fitz continued to visit the asylum every day after the market had closed. The Doctor’s doctor turned him away the first few days, and then seemed to grow tired of it and let him peer through the hatch of the door to the cell where they held the Doctor. The white shape huddled in the corner was only recognisable as the Doctor by his long hair. Fitz watched how the shape suddenly swung its head around and stared at him with void eyes. Three angry red wounds shone on his cheek. Fitz stumbled from the door, startled at that familiar face which was all but familiar. Doctor Smith closed the shutter, and said:

‘Perhaps you should not come to see him as often as you do.’ So Fitz simply went home to Sam after his work-day was over, something which was almost as unpleasant as visiting the asylum. The house was eerily silent since the Doctor had been committed, and Samantha did not take well to the empty place. Most often, Fitz would find her in the kitchen, staring into space and wringing her hands. She could not visit the Doctor at the asylum, as it would be inappropriate, and despite that Fitz explained to her that she should be glad for it, she seemed not to listen. He tried to convey what he had learnt and seen to show her that going there would not do her any good, but it was nigh impossible without disturbing her. Whatever he said, it would only make her hang her head and press her fingers to her lips, trying to quench the sobs. Fitz had been fond of Samantha, but now he realised that they had very little to speak of when the Doctor was not there. After two weeks, Fitz had more or less given up on her and kept to his room, almost wishing he was back in Hoxton. He wondered what lay behind Samantha’s reclusion and constant weeping. It seemed easier to leave her to it, because he was not feeling particularly sociable himself. In fact, he could do little else nowadays but think of the Doctor. The thought of him restrained to a bed or forced into a straitjacket hurt as much as the thought of the things he might do to himself if they did not take such precautions. The memory of the marks on his face still haunted him. Fitz remembered the laughing, gentle eccentric he had come to live with a few months ago, when his childish excitement was the oddest thing about him. That visit to the fair had reduced him to a diseased husk filled only with mad thoughts and delusions. In his solitude, he wondered if the Doctor would ever return to normal.

Then finally there was a telegram from the asylum.

> Patient well enough for visitors STOP. Welcome. END. 

Samantha smiled slightly when he showed it to her, but did not say anything, once again sad that she could not come with him. As he was about to go out of the door, she came hurrying after him.

‘Give him my love,’ she said and blushed. ‘Please.’

‘Of course,’ he answered, and for the first time in weeks they smiled at each other.

Well at the asylum, the Doctor’s doctor lead him not to the cell where he had shown him before, but to a ward which could have been in a proper hospital with rows of beds. Most of the occupants lay still, staring out into space apathetically, sometimes with their limbs oddly crooked. Fitz tried not to stare at them, but followed the physician until he stopped by a bed.

‘Fitz?’ The patient in the bed propped himself up on his elbows, staring at him in disbelief. The Doctor had lost so much weight and grown so pale that at first glance he was almost unrecognisable, but for the characteristic locks. His eyes, which had seemed so empty last time, were filled with quivering life. Fitz approached hesitantly, and then sat down on the chair beside the bed and observed:

‘You look awful.’ The Doctor laughed, offering him his hand. Fitz took it and squeezed it, and then almost threw it away when he looked down at it. His wrist bore the most severe bruises.

‘What...?’

‘Leather restraints,’ the Doctor murmured, laying back his head on the pillow. ‘I don’t like to be trapped.’ Then he turned his head to him again and smiled. ‘I’m so glad to see you, Fitz.’

‘I’m glad to see you,’ Fitz answered and grasped his hand anew. ‘Samantha sends her love.’

‘Of course she does,’ he said quietly. It sounded as if he were about to fall asleep, and Fitz glanced up after doctor Smith to see if he wanted him to leave. He was deep in conversation with one of the nurses, and gave no indication that he thought the visit should be discontinued. So he turned back and returned the Doctor’s weak smile. His stomach leapt at the small movement of the man’s facial muscles.

‘Are you feeling any better?’ he asked him.

‘I feel horrible,’ the Doctor answered truthfully. ‘Before, I didn’t feel anything.’ Fitz, acting on a sudden urge, reached out and touched his hair. The Doctor watched his hand, as if it were a butterfly fluttering close to his face, and then took it lightly in his grip. Even his fingers felt weak. ‘You have dirt under your finger-nails,’ he murmured.

‘I’m sorry,’ Fitz stumbled. ‘I’ve... I’ve been looking after your garden.’ He smiled in reply.

‘Happy men have hands like that.’ Fitz swallowed, because suddenly his heart was pounding and he wanted to lean over and embrace him, keep him safe, never have him enter this awful place again.

‘You’ll be well soon,’ he said emphatically. ‘You’ll be coming home soon.’ The Doctor nodded a little. His hand was paper-white against Fitz’s tanned skin.

‘Do you miss me?’ he whispered.

‘Horribly,’ Fitz answered and swallowed again to keep emotion from his voice. ‘Samantha prays for you every night. I hear her through the walls.’

‘You don’t pray, do you, Fitz?’

‘Not very often, no,’ he admitted.

‘But you work the garden.’ The Doctor smiled again, looking right at him with such intensity that Fitz would have looked away had he been able to. ‘You make things grow with your hands.’ He clutched at his hands and brought them to his lips. Slowly he kissed them, one after the other. Fitz could do nothing but stare. ‘You’ve grown since I picked you up from that cracked pot you were in,’ the Doctor whispered. The next sound he made was more of a sob than a laugh. ‘Look at you, all in bloom,’ he said. ‘You’re so beautiful.’ Fitz stared at him, bewitched at his odd words. He did not know if they were part of his delusion or if he meant something else by it.

The spell was broken by the sound of footsteps, and the Doctor’s doctor saying:

‘Mister Kreiner?’ Fitz closed his eyes for a moment, not wanting his disappointment to show, and then pressed the Doctor’s hand between both his.

‘Don’t leave,’ the Doctor said, sitting up fully suddenly and grabbing his shoulder.

‘I’ll be back soon,’ Fitz promised, but the Doctor shook his head, looking agitated.

‘You’re just saying that - you’re going to leave me here, aren’t you?’

‘No, I’m not,’ he said forcefully. The Doctor backed a little, frightened at his tone, and then he exhaled slowly.

‘Of course you’re not,’ he said weakly, but sounding much more sane.

‘Get some rest,’ Fitz said and pressed his hand again, aware of how limp it had gone. When he left, the nurse approached and started coaxing the Doctor to lie down again. The Doctor’s doctor, who walked beside him, spoke as soon as they were out of earshot.

‘You need not worry at that last little display. He is recovering remarkably well.’

‘So he will be able to go home soon, then?’ Fitz asked. The Doctor’s doctor grew grave.

‘That remains to be seen,’ he said. ‘He has been very calm today, but yesterday was not as encouraging. Even if he has not complained about it, it is obvious that he has been in pain recently, and as you probably noticed, he is not physically well. We have no way of knowing when, or indeed if, he will be well enough.’ The Doctor’s doctor stopped and turned to face him. ‘You must understand, Mister Kreiner, it is very uncommon that patients are taken home simply because they are better. Most inmates live at the asylum whatever their condition. And Mister Smith does not even have a family...’

‘The _Doctor_ ,’ Fitz corrected him, ‘And Samantha and I are his family.’

‘With all due respect, sir, you’re his tenant,’ the Doctor’s doctor said. ‘As for Miss Jones, I have my doubts about that girl...’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Fitz said so sharply that one of the nurses in the ward whirled around and stared at him.

‘Very well,’ the physician said, but gave him a meaningful look. ‘Simply be aware of that whatever you have landed yourself in, Mister Kreiner, will be far more complicated than what your poor mother went through.’

‘Thank you for your time, sir,’ Fitz simply said, put on his cap and left the ward. He walked quickly, the anger at the alienist boiling away with his step and giving way to loneliness. The whole way home he felt hollow. It was as if there was some part of his body missing - no pressure around his chest where there should be, and no body in his arms where it belonged. He thought of the softness of the Doctor’s hair and how it looked almost red against the sheets. As it started raining and he lifted the collar of his coat against it, he imagined cradling that head in his hands and feeling the Doctor’s cheek against his as they held onto each other. He tried to imagine the Doctor drawing back a little from the embrace with a knowing smile, and then slowly bringing their lips together. Fitz realised that he had stopped in his step, and was standing stock still on the pavement, trying to imagine kissing his landlord. It made his stomach flutter and his cheeks burn. He did not know that such desires were even possible to have.

He started walking again, and tried to think of sweethearts he had had. Their faces were dim, the world of Hoxton distant. Only the Doctor seemed real, and yet so otherworldly. His heart leapt as he thought of how the Doctor had kissed his hands and how his blue gaze had not left his face as he did it. Even that first encounter, when he had put his hand over his heart and described that odd flower-simile, still lingered.

These thoughts occupied him on the omnibus ride home. When he stepped into the house and Samantha approached to ask of the news, he embraced her. She clung to him, her cheek pressed against his chest, but her body felt wrong against his. It was too short and too soft, and her hair was too coarse. It did not drive away the feeling that part of his body was missing, so he broke the contact with an apologetic smile. She drew away willingly and started instead asking questions about the Doctor. He answered, but the world around him did not seem real. His encounter with the Doctor had sparked something.

Later that evening, he realised that he had fallen in love.


	4. Chapter 4

It had been a process in the making, he realised, one which had started the very first time they had met. He spent the following days trying to figure it out. He had not known that it was possible to be in love with another man. There were sodomites who wanted to sleep with other men, of course, but he had never considered that they might fall in love. He tried to instill some form of shame in himself, but he could not convince himself of it. However he thought about it he could not equate what he felt for the Doctor with some sordid transaction in a back-alley. He did not claim (to himself, for he naturally did not mention it to anyone) that this was some purer form of love than that; he could not deny that he desired his body, but at present, all he cared about was to have the Doctor back safely from the place where he was being kept. All his imaginings of things he wanted to do or have done to him were abstracted, shrouded in the shadows which the Doctor’s madness cast. _I’ll use this love,_ Fitz decided. _I’ll help him get better through it._ So when he left Hoxton market for the asylum a few days later, it was with a spring in his step.

No one stopped him as he walked towards the ward, and when he passed a nurse, she bobbed a courtesy and smiled. For a moment he thought there was something pitying in her gaze, but he brushed it aside. He started looking around for the Doctor’s bed, but could not see it at first, Then he realised that one bed was almost entirely hidden by screens. Stopping to look around, he saw no nurses or doctors, and being certain that none of the inmates would object, he approached to where two of the screens had been separated to form a doorway.

Inside, a swarm of white coats over dark suits surrounded the bed. He could see the outline of the patient, but the view of his upper body was blocked by a man leaning over it. A dozen young men stood by the bedside, attentively listening to their teacher. The silver-white hair made him instantly recognisable.

Fitz cleared his throat, and Doctor Smith looked up at him. The students also turned, alarmed at the intrusion. The visitor paid no heed to them, but only looked at their patient. His head was slumped to one side, his face relaxed in sleep or unconsciousness. They had unbuttoned his night-shirt to expose his chest, which shone white even against the sheets. Fitz’s stomach contracted when he realised that the physician was showing him to these medical students because of his two hearts. The Doctor was still being exhibited, not as a mysterious baby angel without a navel, but as a freakish madman who had no choice. It sickened him to see his beautiful friend laid bare like this, as if awaiting an untimely dissection.

The Doctor’s doctor had left his place by the bedside and crossed to him.

‘Gentlemen, this is Mister Kreiner - Mister Smith’s tenant,’ he announced, and the medics nodded, seemingly embarrassed. He then turned to him and said sotto voce: ‘Would you be so good as to explain your presence, Mister Kreiner?’

‘I wanted to see the Doctor,’ he explained. ‘What’s going on?’ Doctor Smith did not answer, and Fitz looked from him to the medics to the Doctor. ‘You’re using him as your prime showpiece,’ he concluded. Doctor Smith’s jaw tightened.

‘Mister Kreiner, this is an unprecedented case...’

‘He’s a human being!’ Fitz shouted, and the ward echoed his words. The ringing silence which followed was only broken by the sound of breathing. ‘You’re using him as a specimen,’ he said at last.

‘Mister Kreiner,’ the Doctor’s doctor said, his face tightening yet more ‘To me, any living or dead human being is a specimen. The medical eye does not allow a difference.’ They stared at each other, and Fitz felt almost sick with hatred. At last he looked away and watched the Doctor instead, still limp and pale.

‘Tell me how he is,’ he said quietly. ‘Will he be alright?’

‘Time will tell,’ the man answered.

‘Time...’ Fitz looked around, bewildered, and was surprised to realise that it was the Doctor who had spoken. Now he opened his eyes and, even if he stayed still, the corners of his mouth twitched, as if he was attempting to smile. ‘Fitz,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why?’ he asked, ignoring the physician’s angry glance as he went to the bedside to take his hand. The eyes which met his were cloudy, and did not seem to focus on him.

‘For leaving you. For doing what I did - for remaking you like that. I should never have let them take you... You mustn’t know... what happened...’ He seemed to lose consciousness again. The medical students watched the patient and the tenant, seemingly bewildered.

‘This is one of Mister Smith’s delusions,’ the Doctor’s doctor announced. He was back in the role of a lecturer. ‘He often speaks of different dangerous scenarios involving himself as a kind of hero, where people around him either help him or need saving. It is not an uncommon trait in particularly helpless lunatics, that they style themselves in their minds as the antithesis of their actual forms. While Mister Smith himself is a typical idler, having no proper education, no employment and no achievements, the man he imagines himself to be - whom he calls “the Doctor”, a name he insists on using for himself - is an adventurer, a Childe Harold. Or perhaps rather a Don Quixote.’ The medical students laughed. ‘Of course, giving into the wishes of a lunatic will simply encourage such delusions. It might even drive one mad oneself.’ The Doctor’s doctor glanced at Fitz, and he glared back.

‘I’ll see myself out,’ Fitz muttered and turned. He could not bear so many men who thought they were superior speaking like that of the Doctor and of himself. He understood that staying would do little good; they would tell him nothing more of the Doctor’s state, and he thought that there was the risk that he would simply strike the man if he did not leave.

When he came back to the house, he heard the sound of someone playing the untuned piano, a key at a time without a melody. When he entered the living room, Samantha stood and turned to him.

‘How was he?’ Fitz sighed, sat down on the stool and started to hammer out a song his mother had once used to sing. The sound of the music was harsh and grating, without any of the tenderness which she had sung it with.

'That doctor of his is an idiot,’ he said finally, starting from the beginning. He was hitting the keys so hard that he thought that there was a risk that he hurt the strings inside. ‘He was showing him up like some pickled animal in a jar - kept talking about what a shirker he was.’ He missed a key and instead of continuing, slammed down both his hands so that high and low notes joined in a mighty cacophony of sound. Then slowly he lightened his grip and let it dwindle, leaning his head against the body of the piano. The Doctor’s sickly appearance had come back to him, and he closed his eyes shut, hoping it would quench the picture. It did not.

‘Fitz?’ Samantha approached again. Fitz did not move; he thought that he would start crying if he tried to speak. At last the feeling passed and he straightened up to face her.

‘He hates us both, you know,’ he said. ‘Doctor Smith, I mean. He seems to think that I’m going to go mad as well, and I don’t know what he implied about you.’

‘I think I can guess,’ Samantha said and hung her head. ‘How was he?’

‘Worse, I think.’

‘Have they put him back in the cell?’ she asked tearfully. He shook his head.

‘No - it’s his heart condition or something. He didn’t tell me anything, but... he seemed worse.’ She sunk down onto a nearby chair, and he turned to face her. ‘I’ve never seen him so pale...’

‘Will he be alright?’ she asked, desperation straining her voice. ‘Fitz... Will he live?’

‘I hope so,’ Fitz said, because that was all he could say. They had not told him enough to let him know if there was a risk that he would not. All he wanted was to get the Doctor away from that place, because now he realised that Samantha was right that it probably did him no good. ‘We’ll get him out of there,’ he promised. Samantha looked away and admitted:

‘I don’t know what I’d do,’ she said, not daring to give a protasis. _Me neither,_ Fitz thought, but simply pressed her hand in consolation.

***

The following week they did not hear anything from the asylum until Sunday, when there was a knock on the door. When Fitz opened it, he found a boy, his cap at an angle, outside.

‘Telegram for ya, guvner,’ he said and waved a little envelope. Fitz thrust his hands in his pocket and found sixpence, which he exchanged for the telegram. The boy gave him a lazy kind of salute, but Fitz was already ripping open the envelope and shouting:

‘Samantha! Samantha!’ He fell silent as he eyed through the telegram and felt his heart-rate speed up.

‘What is it?’ Samantha answered from upstairs and then appeared at the landing, her best dress on. ‘I’m late for church.’

‘There’s a telegram,’ he explained and brandished it. Her disapproving face fell and she rushed down the stairs.

‘What does it say?’

‘Listen,’ he urged and started reading it. ‘“Come as soon as convenient”...’

‘What’s happened?’ she said, suddenly shock-white.

‘Wait and listen,’ Fitz told her. ‘“Come as soon as convenient - stop - patient to be discharged today - end.”’ He watched how the words sunk in and delight overtook her face.

‘He’s coming home?’ she asked, eyes growing.

‘Yes!’ Fitz exclaimed and they both laughed. He picked her up and swung her around, and she laughed, neither of them bothered by the familiarity of the action. When he let her down, he said: ‘Come on, let’s go and get him now at once.’

‘After church,’ she said and took her bonnet from the table.

‘Samantha...’ he said, but she turned and gave him a meaningful look.

‘My prayers have been answered,’ she said solemnly. ‘I must give thanks.’ She smiled at him. ‘Don’t go without me. The doctors do let me come there when they’re discharging him, after all, and I want to be there.’

‘Of course,’ he said and watched her leave. He had to stop himself from running out of the door and break his promise as soon as the door closed behind her. It felt like his heart leapt so violently that it made him move. Finally, the Doctor (because that was his name - he would not call him by a sobriquet forced upon him by some physician) was coming home. Life was returning to the house.

***

Fitz was glad that Samantha had not forced him into attending church with her today, but waiting at home was probably equally daunting. He wandered around the house and attempted to keep himself occupied. He tried finding something to tidy, but Samantha had meticulously gone over every window-sill and book-shelf, every mantlepiece and table. In the end he ascended and went into the Doctor’s room. He had hoped to be able to make the bed, but once again Samantha had been before him; now he remembered that she had bustled around with sheets and pillows the same day the Doctor had been committed, as if expecting him to come back that very evening. The bed was carefully made, but the flowers on the bedside table were dead and dry. Fitz threw them out and decided not to replace them. The Doctor’s simile of him as a flower came back to him, and he thought that perhaps cut flowers would upset him. He folded and refolded the blanket at the foot of the bed and then sat down in the armchair which he had slept in almost a month ago when the Doctor had fallen ill. A sudden fear grasped him. What if the people at the asylum were simply sick of the Doctor - perhaps even of Fitz - and in order to get rid of him were discharging him? Perhaps he was not well at all. Much as he disliked the Doctor’s doctor, Fitz knew that he was the only person willing to treat his friend. He hoped that he had not made enemies with him, because perhaps (and saying “perhaps” felt a little too optimistic) they would need his help again. Still, he could not imagine that he would release a patient who was in any danger. He closed his eyes and willed himself to have a little faith, if not in God then in the medical profession, and if that did not work, perhaps he could have faith in the Doctor.

He heard the door open from downstairs and went down to meet Samantha. He had hoped simply to grab his coat and best hat and leave, but she shook her head.

‘We need to bring clothes for him,’ she exclaimed. ‘And shoes, for that matter, although he might not want to wear them.’ So he waited while she went upstairs and packed clothes for their homecoming landlord. When they left she had a bag in her hand and carried the Doctor’s bottle-green coat over the arm which she did not have around Fitz’s. They took the omnibus and walked the last bit. Unlike what Fitz had done the time before, they approached the nurse in the reception, who recognised Samantha and smiled reservedly at her.

‘He’s in the garden, with Doctor Smith,’ she explained. ‘I’ll take you.’ As if on cue, another nurse stepped forward and took her place as she left it and showed them out of the large house again. They passed onto the grass close to where the Doctor and Samantha had been sitting the first time he had met them together and continued around the building. There were many nurses out walking with patients who were well enough to be outside. Some even played a game of croquet, and it was close to this congregation the Doctor sat in a whicker-chair, dressed in the unbecoming light regulation clothes of the asylum. The sun fell on his head and made his locks glow, and suddenly his laugh rung over the lawn. Fitz’s stomach gave a half-pleasant, half-terrifying jolt, but before he had time to do anything, Samantha had let go of his arm and with a shout - ‘Doctor!’ - she ran over the lawn. As she ran right through the croquet pitch and towards him, the Doctor rose, so astonished that he knocked his chair over, and caught her in his arms. Fitz and the nurse followed after at a slower pace.

‘She is a rather excitable girl,’ the nurse commented ruefully.

‘She hasn’t seen him for a month,’ Fitz answered, wondering why everyone in the asylum were so ready to pass judgement over Samantha, even this nurse, who was not many years older. Then when he looked towards her and the Doctor, he understood why it was thought odd. Where they stood with their hands clutching and their eyes shining, they looked more like a courting couple rather than master and maid. Then the Doctor looked up and caught sight of him. He dropped Samantha’s hands and walked towards him; it looked like he wanted to run, but did not have the strength.

‘Fitz!’ he exclaimed as he drew nearer and quickened his step a little. ‘Then it’s really true!’ He laughed and flung himself on him, wrapping his arms around his neck. Fitz felt a brief sense of completeness as the Doctor clung to him and he wrapped his arms around his painfully thin body. When the Doctor drew back, he felt a pang of disappointment, only stilled by how his eyes, which seemed overly bright, met his. ‘You’re taking me home.’

‘Yes,’ Fitz said and laughed, realising it properly for the first time. ‘Yes, we really are.’ The Doctor smiled back.

‘I knew that this exile wouldn’t last,’ he said. There were footsteps, and Fitz noticed Samantha at the Doctor’s side. He was acutely aware of how the Doctor’s gaze did not leave him, as if he did not notice her. Guiltily, Fitz flicked his eyes her way, just long enough to notice the vague look of disappointment in her face.

Doctor Smith approached and greeted them both. Fitz had expected him to be quite curt with him, but he was quite pleasant, perhaps pretending that their last encounter had not happened.

‘We’re so glad he’s coming back to us, sir,’ Samantha said to him.

‘I’m sure you are, Miss Jones,’ the Doctor’s doctor answered and inclined his head. ‘I understand that you have brought him clothes? Nurse Grant will help you. Mister Kreiner, if I might have a word...’ The nurse prompted the Doctor with a light hand on his arm, and she and Samantha lead him towards the house again. Doctor Smith turned the other way, followed by Fitz. They walked in silence for a while, then Fitz asked:

‘Is he well enough to go home?’

‘Yes, I think he is,’ the Doctor’s doctor answered. ‘For the time being, at least, but that is all we can strive for in cases such as this one. He will need to be taken care of when he comes home - it can be agitating to be suddenly thrown into something so different from this environment.’ _Different in all the right ways,_ Fitz thought. ‘If he grows too agitated, give him a few drops of laudanum. Mix it in some tea - he tends not to want to take it.’

‘So we trick him?’ Fitz asked.

‘It is not a question of morality, Mister Kreiner,’ the Doctor’s doctor reminded him. ‘It is a charitable act. Now, if he seems unwell in any way or if there seems to be an episode on its way, do not hesitate to send a telegram or bring him here. It is, of course, for his own good.’ He turned and looked at him. ‘Was there anything else?’

‘No. Thank you,’ he added. The Doctor’s doctor looked at him with a knowing smile.

‘I tend not to be particularly popular with the relatives of my patients, Mister Kreiner,’ he said, ‘or their friends, for that matter. But as you see, the treatment we give helps.’

‘Yes,’ Fitz conceded and could not help but sigh.

‘It will not be the last we see of each other, or the last the Doctor will see of this asylum,’ the man continued. ‘There is no cure for his condition. All I hope is that the people around him are good and decent, because that will ease his suffering.’

‘Of course,’ Fitz said emphatically, secretly happy that he understood. Then a sudden thought struck him, and he smiled at it. The physician arched a questioning eyebrow. ‘Have you ever thought of that the _Doctor’s_ given surname is Smith, and you’re Doctor Smith?’

‘It had crossed my mind,’ the Doctor’s doctor said, his tone reserved. ‘Now, shall we see if we can find your friend?’ There was something odd with the way he stressed that last word, and Fitz wondered if his attachment to the Doctor was that obvious. Or was it something the Doctor had said? As they returned to the building, he wondered what the Doctor might have said in his delirium, and if what he had said was affectionate at all. He suddenly remembered in terrifying vividness how the Doctor had kissed his cheek in Hyde Park when he had said he would come live with them. _Don’t dwell on it,_ he told himself. _Better not contemplate it._ He needed to be pragmatic and protective now. Samantha was impulsive and emotional for both of them.

But still, when the Doctor stepped out into the sunlight, he felt his heart swell with joy. The disease had marked him, hollowing out his cheeks and deepening the lines by his mouth, but he was once again dressed in velvet and satin, which made his hair not look like the unkempt mane of a madman but the neat curls of a dandy. They added something youthful, almost effeminate to his face, which became only more accented by his thin hands which he moved as part of a conscious mannerism. The first time Fitz had met the Doctor, what had struck him most of all was the odd way he transcended male and female. Now he thought it might be a trait which was particularly obvious when he was recovering for an episode, because he thought he saw the same now. Once someone - a neighbour, he thought, trying to vainly comfort him about his ill mother - had told him that in olden days, people had imagined that the mad were actually divinely inspired, and had a special link with God. Fitz did not think that the Doctor had any particular standing with any divinity, but he did straddle what was male and what was female, what was man and what was animal, what was human and what was a strange otherness. When he stood there on the asylum steps and took hold of Fitz’s arm, giving him a look of silent thanks, he seemed unbound by both the world which had banished him from its midst and the world he had been sent into. He was an exile into reality, cast out of a dreamworld where he belonged, which perhaps had never existed. Even if his wrists still bore angry bruises from the restraints, the bruises were evidence that he had been let lose. They were standing close ( _far too close_ ), and even if Samantha was standing right beside them, impatient to go or at least to be noticed, he very nearly kissed the Doctor. It felt like he stopped himself in the very last moment possible, and simply covered the Doctor’s hand with his own. The Doctor sat next to Samantha in the cab home, his head leaning against hers and their hands clasped, but his eyes did not leave Fitz. The ride home was excruciating, because he wanted but could not reach out and touch him. At least there was some comfort in that he felt that if he tried to draw near, the Doctor would not push him back.


	5. Chapter 5

After a month of silence in the house, the Doctor’s long-awaited return felt almost odd. When Fitz woke up the next day, he heard singing from the garden, and, when he crossed to the window, saw the Doctor in his shirt-sleeves and a broad-brimmed hat caring for his herb garden. He watched him, opening the window a little to let the sound of his light tenor in. It had a sincerity uncommon for one who was simply singing to himself when working.

 _She was a fish-monger - that sure was no wonder  
For so was her father and mother before.   
And she wheeled her wheel-barrow  
through streets broad and narrow  
crying, ‘cockles and mussles,  
Aly, aly-o._

 _Aly, aly-o, aly, aly-o..._

Fitz watched as he scooted closer on his knees and inspecting the rosemary. His feet were bare, encrusted with dirt. Even if his face was turned away from him, the last verse of the song was easy to hear, as his voice rose mournfully.

 _She died in a fever - no one could save her  
and that is the end of sweet Molly Malone.   
But still she wheels her wheel-barrow  
through streets broad and narrow  
crying, ‘cockles and mussles,   
Aly, aly-o...’ _

The song cut short and his head turned. The morning-sun cast his face in shadow, but Fitz could feel his gaze on him from under the brim of the hat. He did not dare to admit to having spied on him, but simply turned away from the window, pretending that he had simply been watching the sky. He pulled the curtains to get dressed and ready for the market, leaving the Doctor with Samantha.

The days at the flower-stall gave Fitz time to think, and Samantha time in the Doctor’s company. While the Doctor’s absence had changed her, his return had not turned her back to her previous state. Something in her mood had shifted, and whenever Fitz saw her, she would chew her lip and be quiet. The Doctor seemed oblivious of this, which made Fitz wonder whether she acted happier when only he was there. It struck him that also the Doctor had changed. Before, he had spent much of his time with Samantha, but now, as soon as Fitz would return from the market, he would come bounding into the hallway to greet him. He had stopped taking walks as he had before; Fitz first thought it was because he did not have the energy, but when he learned that he sometimes went out walking in the daytime, he realised that that was not the case. About a week after the Doctor had had been discharged, Samantha broke her customary silence to Fitz while they were preparing the dinner.

‘He touches you a lot,’ she observed. Her voice sounded a little strained, as if she was trying her upmost to make it sound casual.

‘I guess so,’ Fitz answered and shrugged. He watched how the knife she was holding went up and down rapidly, chopping several carrots at once.

‘I thought you might mind it,’ she pressed on.

‘Not particularly,’ he said. ‘It’s just the kind of thing he does.’

‘Really?’ she asked and then shouted suddenly and dropped the knife. The carrots were stained red.

‘Samantha, watch what you’re doing,’ he said and took out a handkerchief. She accepted it and tried to stop the bleeding from her thumb, which bore a shallow gash where the knife had touched her.

‘Sorry,’ she muttered, not looking up. ‘Thank you for the handkerchief.’

‘Not at all,’ he said, suddenly worried for her. He had never seen her be careless with a knife before. ‘Are you alright?’

‘Just a bit tired,’ Samantha said curtly. ‘I’ve let myself get lazy, with no one to take care of.’

‘I can ask the Doctor to help me with this,’ Fitz said and gestured at the ingredients for the dinner. ‘In case....‘

‘No, no, it’s fine,’ she said and started walking towards the door. ‘I can manage. Let me just do something about this. I don’t need help.’ She disappeared to tend to her cut thumb and left Fitz puzzled.

The incident was still on his mind a few days later while he prepared the Doctor’s bath. After their landlord had been discharged, Fitz and Samantha had decided that to be on the safe side, Fitz should be present when he bathed and shaved. Fitz felt precarious about it, but the Doctor seemed to mind neither his presence nor the implication about his mental state. Fitz had just finished filling the bathtub when the Doctor entered and greeted him with a smile. Then, absolutely unabashed by his gaze, he dropped his dressing-gown, the red silk falling around his feet and for a moment it looked like his naked form had just grown out of a pool of blood. Fitz felt himself blush as he looked over his body and then averted his eyes. When the Doctor was safely in the water, he dared to look again and watched as he dipped his head in the water. He brought it up again and shook it like a dog would. Drawing his wet hair out of his face, he took a sponge from the nearby cupboard and tossed it towards Fitz. He caught it and looked at it with puzzlement. The Doctor inclined his head.

‘Come on,’ he said playfully. ‘I’m an invalid, remember?’ Fitz stared at the sponge in his hand and then said:

‘Sure.’ He put it down momentarily to roll up his sleeves and get a bar of soap. Then he moved the chair in the corner close to the bath-tub and sat down. The Doctor drew his hair away from his shoulders, exposing his back to him. Biting his lip, Fitz lathered the sponge and, taking a light grip around the man’s shoulder, he started to draw it over his back. The Doctor made a sound which almost sounded like purring. They were silent, and Fitz almost forgot his concerns as he looked over the Doctor’s back. There was something characteristic about the shape of shoulder-blades and the nodes of his spine under the skin. He let go of the Doctor’s shoulder and drew his fingers after the sponge. Then he remembered what had kept him preoccupied before, and he admitted:

'I’m worried about Samantha.’

‘Why?’ the Doctor asked, not sounding particularly interested. ‘Sam is alright.’

‘Just... she seems a bit troubled,’ he said and paused for a moment as he drew the sponge down to the surface, at his waist. Where the lather from the soap glided apart, he could glimpse his buttocks through the water. ‘I don’t know really what’s wrong,’ he continued, looking away and drawing the sponge up his back again. ‘It’s just... she’s not herself.’

‘I think you’re worrying for no reason,’ the Doctor assured him and looked over his shoulder with a smile.

‘She said she’d become lazy when you were away,’ he said, ‘but that sounds like an excuse to me.’

‘Perhaps she’s feeling a bit rusty,’ he suggested, sounding as if there really was nothing to worry about.

‘How long have you lived together?’ Fitz asked and pushed his fingers into the Doctor’s hair, fascinated at its texture even when it was wet. He started scrubbing his shoulders, and the Doctor squirmed pleasantly.

‘Oh, years,’ he answered. ‘Well, perhaps not quite. One and a half years, perhaps? Or perhaps two. I don’t know. My memory isn’t very good.’

‘She told me that she was a Salvation Army soldier in the East End,’ Fitz remembered.

‘Well, she was eventually,’ the Doctor said.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

‘She wasn’t the first time I met her. I think the dark-blue and red suited her rather well, though.’ Understanding that the Doctor would not tell him more, he simply continued to scrub his shoulders. He continued until the Doctor reached and caught his hand.

‘No more?’ he asked.

‘No,’ the Doctor said ambiguously and drew his hand over his shoulder to his chest, pressing down the sponge to show what he wanted him to do. Fitz swallowed, and then lathered the sponge again before starting to run it in slow circles. From where he sat, he could only reach his shoulders and collar-bones, so he stood up and leaned over the tub, steadying himself with his free hand against its edge. He moved the sponge down over his chest, and the Doctor hummed appreciatively as he leaned back, resting against Fitz. The water in his hair soaked through his shirt, and Fitz swallowed again. His heart sped up until it beat madly, so rapidly that he thought that the Doctor must hear it. He was painfully aware of the water and the soap and the Doctor’s smooth chest, and felt his trousers grow increasingly uncomfortable. He was glad that he did not have to stay closer, or the Doctor would notice that, but surely he could not be oblivious about this? Then again, the Doctor was comfortable in his body in a way people usually were not, and exposure did not seem to bother him, whether it was of his bare feet or his naked body. Perhaps he did not notice that there was anything erotic about the situation... The soap lather which had run off his body had formed a thin film over the surface of the water, so he could not tell by a glance if he was in a similar state, and simply sticking down his hand seemed too obvious. He concentrated on drawing the sponge down his chest and stomach, and once again the Doctor purred. Then he raised his arm over his head and put it around Fitz’s neck, pressing him close. Fitz inadvertedly gasped and let the sponge fall from his grip, instead flattening his hand against the Doctor’s chest. They tightened the precarious embrace and the Doctor turned his head so that his forehead rested against Fitz’s cheek. He closed his eyes, and that cold skin under his fingers and the soft sound of the water moving was all he perceived. Fitz imagined getting down on his knees so they were face to face, kissing him, taking off his own clothes and slipping into the bath-tub with him, reaching down into the water and touching him...

The Doctor lowered his arm, releasing him, and he felt him move. When he opened his eyes, he had turned to face him. His eyes seemed huge in his face, and when Fitz tried to speak, all that came was an unattractive gulp. The Doctor smiled and reached up, cupping his cheek.

‘Doctor, I...’ Fitz started saying, but he hushed him.

‘Don’t, Fitz,’ the Doctor said softly. ‘Just kiss me.’ He stared at him, shocked at having heard him say it. His knees shook with trepidation, but still he leaned in. Their lips brushed together, just a soft touch, but enough. Fitz stood up and backed a few steps, breathing heavily. ‘Fitz,’ the Doctor said, disappointment seeming to rise from his skin.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered; he found that he could not raise his voice. ‘I... I can’t. I don’t... dare.’ The Doctor frowned.

‘Why? You don’t _dare_?’ Fitz felt a sudden spark of annoyance.

‘It’s all so easy for you, isn’t it?’ he said and, forgetful of his duty, turned and left the door. He realised a few steps from the door that he should not leave the Doctor on his own and stopped, wondering if he should go back. Then he shook himself and continued to his room. It had been an overcautious decision anyway, and he did not want to face him. The reflection which met him in the mirror was laughable; his forearms were soapy, his shirt had splotches of water on it, where the Doctor had leaned his head, and is hair was mussed. Fitz sighed and started to flatten it as he undid his shirt. Having discarded the shirt, he sat down on the bed, confused at what had happened. He had had the opportunity to kiss him, as he had wanted for three weeks (probably longer than that, although he had not known it at the time), and he had not dared. Sighing again, Fitz leaned his head in his hands. Not only that, he had told him that he did not dare, and the Doctor had not understood. To be fair, he was not certain he understood himself, but still...

For the first time since moving to the house at Primrose Hill, he felt true anger against the oddness of his landlord - his friend. Most of the time, his eccentricity or his condition (Fitz was not certain which one was more prevalent, or which one caused the other) was either charming or a cause of worry. It had not inhibited him from understanding him like now. By the sound of it, the Doctor simply could not grasp the complexities of what was going on in Fitz’s mind. He just hoped that he would understand that it had not been a rejection. The problem was simply that Fitz Kreiner was a coward. He rose and looked himself in the mirror again. Yes, that was all there was. He was a coward and did not dare to do what he had yearned to do for so long. Swearing under his breath, he started pulling on a dry shirt.

‘It’s the way of the world, I guess,’ he said to himself as he started buttoning it. ‘There are some things we simply can’t have, because we’re too damn stupid to take them.’ That brought on another thought - what would happen if the Doctor approached him about it again? Would he dare to kiss him then? He wanted it desperately, but he did not trust himself to be strong enough to actually do it. There was the risk, of course, that he had scared him off for good, and that the Doctor would not want to kiss him again, perhaps even that he would not want to speak to him... In his mind’s eye he saw the Doctor’s face as it fell, disappointed in his failure to please. He shuddered at the thought.

He needed to get out. He would go to the vegetable garden and see if anything needed tending or pruning - it was not quite dark yet. Strengthened by this sense of purpose, Fitz left his room. Just as he went out onto the landing, there came a mighty crash from the kitchen which half made him jump out of his skin. Then he snapped into attention again and ran down the stairs and into the kitchen.

Samantha was crouching in the shards of what had been a large porcelain dish, her hands covering her face and her shoulders shaking.

‘Samantha?’ Fitz said, but she did not react. He picked his way through the shards until he reached her and took hold of her shoulders. ‘Sam, it was only a dish. We can replace it...’ She only wept harder. He realised suddenly that quite possibly, it was not the broken dish she was crying about. ‘Come on,’ he said and, shifting his grip to her arms, hefted her up. She blubbed an objection as he lead her to a chair. There was something odd with the situation - even if Samantha was emotional, she usually swallowed her tears and pretended to be strong. It seemed out of character for her to cry like this. As he leaned in and made her sit down, he realised that there was the smell of gin on her breath. Perplexed, he sat down and looked at her. ‘Samantha, have you been drinking?’ She made a sound as if she objected to being questioned and covered her face again. ‘What’s wrong?’ he pressed.

‘Why does he never look at me?’ Her speech was slurred, but the words were clear enough. ‘Why does he never pay any attention to me?’

‘Who? The Doctor?’ She started crying again, and, feeling rather helpless, he put an arm around her shoulders. Even if she did not answer his query, he could think of no other it could be. Suddenly it struck him how stupid he had been. His own obsession with the Doctor had blinded him for Samantha’s. All those months ago, she had told him that she was not a kept woman. Now he realised that she actually wished to be one.

It made his mind up. He let her cry for a little while more, and then he helped her upstairs and into bed. She would probably feel pretty rough in the morning, so he reminded himself to leave a note for the Doctor telling him to take care of her. Then he went to bed, intent on leaving for the market before everyone else had risen.

***

In the afternoon when he came back to the house, it first seemed empty. He finally found the Doctor in the garden, sitting in his favourite whicker chair staring at the birds which flew back and forth. Fitz slumped down in the chair beside him, and they sat in silence for a long time.

‘How’s Samantha?’ Fitz finally asked.

‘Asleep,’ the Doctor answered, his tone disinterested. ‘She’ll probably be down for dinner.’

‘I’m still rather surprised,’ he admitted. ‘It doesn’t really seem like her to... get in such a state.’

‘Perhaps you are judging on appearances,’ the Doctor simply said. Fitz thought that now he sounded almost cruel, as if he was aware that he had a hold on him, and he was not going to tell him what he did not know of the events in the house. He considered asking him if this had ever happened before, but he knew that would only be stalling for time. He needed to get to the heart of the matter.

‘Look, Doctor,’ he said and turned to look at him. The Doctor did not look away from the birds. ‘Listen to me, this is important.’ He cast him a disinterested glance. ‘Why don’t you do the honourable thing?’

‘And what would that be?’ he asked and leaned back in his chair.

‘Come on, you know that,’ Fitz said. ‘Why don’t you marry Sam?’ The Doctor’s head shot up and his eyes seemed to pierce him.

‘Marry Sam?’ he repeated. ‘Whyever would I do that?’

‘Because she’s in love with you, and she’s been it all this time,’ Fitz explained forcefully. ‘You’ve lived together for so long, and she wants you to know how she feels but can’t tell you, because she feels that you should make the first move. That’s why she got drunk yesterday - because she’s absolutely lovesick for you.’ The Doctor hung his head and then rose, once again turning his eyes to the sky. They lapsed into silence, and only the bird song could be heard.

At last the Doctor said:

‘I couldn’t marry Sam.’

‘Why not?’ Fitz said.

‘Because I couldn’t.’

‘Not even for her sake?’ he pressed. ‘People talk about you, I’m sure. When I first got to know the two of you she felt the need to tell me that she wasn’t your mistress. Surely it’d be better for her if there wouldn’t be those questions?’ The Doctor stayed still, facing away from him. Fitz sighed and admitted: ‘There’s another reason too.’

‘Oh?’ he said hollowly. Fitz swallowed, hoping to understand his reasoning, and said:

‘I’m in love with you too. So it’d be better if you married Sam.’ Now the Doctor turned, and Fitz’s stomach lurched when he saw the melancholic smile his face bore.

‘I never knew anything about love,’ he said as he slowly returned to his seat, not leaning back but simply sitting on the edge. The way he leaned his elbows against his knees showed just how difficult this confession felt. ‘I barely knew it existed, until a few years before I met Sam. I was out walking - I walked out of the city until I could barely see it, until I met someone else who was walking down the same road.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘He was young, and quite beautiful, with the most fetching pale eyes. His name was Turlough - he had run away from school, and was going to walk home, all that way. I thought I might walk there with him. We walked together until the night fell, when we lay down in a field, and suddenly I realised...’ He drew his fingers over his lips, reminiscing the discovery. ‘I had seen so many people putting their mouths together. I had heard the word “kiss”. I had never understood it before. But when I kissed Turlough... it was something extraordinary.’ He sighed.

‘The police found us the next day, and took him back to the school. It made me quite sad. They took me to the asylum, where they kept me for months, even when I wasn’t having my funny-turns. There was a nurse there with thin wire spectacles and sharp cheek-bones and an odd accent. I tried kissing her a few times, to see if it was like kissing Turlough. It wasn’t at all the same - her mouth was all wrong. After a while I realised that it was because she was a woman, and Turlough was a man. I tried to tell Doctor Smith that. He locked me in a cell for it. He seemed to have found it offensive in some way.’ He shrugged. Fitz stared at him in disbelief.

‘Do you really not understand why he did that?’ Fitz asked. The Doctor shrugged.

‘No.’

‘You mean it doesn’t bother you? Two men...?’ He looked perplexed at his question.

‘Why should it?’ Fitz tried to answer; because it had always been wrong. Because the church and the state and the law said it was wrong. Because it was disgusting and immoral and did not further society...

He simply closed his mouth. The Doctor would not acknowledge the church as an authority, and he would not know the law, and he did not care for society. In this house, there were other rules. If Fitz’s love for the Doctor should fall outside such rules, then so would anything the Doctor felt.

Now he smiled at Fitz’s silence and leaned a little closer.

‘You see, Fitz, I think that kissing Sam would be like kissing Nurse Holloway - I think her mouth would feel wrong in the same way. But...’ He looked down, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘That tiny kiss yesterday was better than any kiss Turlough gave me.’ Fitz sat up straight and stared at him. Finally he admitted:

‘I don’t know if I could do it, Doctor.’

‘You don’t dare?’ the Doctor said, sounding ironic.

‘No, I...’ He cut himself off. ‘I can’t explain it.’

‘Is it real, in that case?’ he asked and reached out, fingers extending to touch his. Fitz watched their hands, wanting both to hold it and draw back. ‘I’ve wanted to touch you since I first saw you,’ he explained. ‘I have been so happy that you’ve been here, but... it’s not enough.’

‘Are you saying that if I should leave?’ The Doctor grabbed his wrist hard.

‘ _No_ ,’ he said, and the momentary gleam of madness entered his eyes. ‘Don’t leave, please don’t leave.’

‘I don’t want to leave,’ Fitz insisted. The Doctor smiled, looking a little more hopeful. For every moment he watched him, his defenses were becoming weaker. He had planned to speak to the Doctor on Samantha’s behalf, hoping that if he could solve her problem for her, his would go away. Besides, there were the sodomy laws, and he thought that if the Doctor would be married, it would keep him from transgression, and if he failed, it would avert suspicions. Now it felt increasingly unlikely that the law’s long arm could stretch into this peaceful house. Finally, he wondered how the Doctor would deal with rejection. He did not want to spark another episode, simply by his own stupidity. _Who are you trying to kid, Fitz Kreiner?_ he thought. _You’re fooling exactly no-one._

‘Come here,’ he said and shifted their hands to that he grabbed the Doctor’s wrist as well. He obeyed, rising from his chair and settling instead on Fitz’s knees. It was a precarious position at first, as the Doctor’s legs were too long for it to be comfortable, but Fitz’s arm slipped around his waist as the Doctor touched his hair and face, as if in preparation.

‘Perhaps I should have shaved,’ Fitz said as he drew his fingers over the stubble on his chin.

‘No,’ the Doctor smiled, his hand coming to rest on one side of his jaw. ‘This will do. It makes you look a little like a ruffian.’ Fitz laughed the very same moment that the Doctor chose to dip down and kiss him. Lips met teeth, and the Doctor tried to open his mouth at the same time as Fitz tried to close his in an attempt to find a consensus. They drew back and looked at each other, half embarrassed and half amused. Then they grew serious again, and the Doctor started shifting, so that instead of sitting on his knees, he straddled his lap. They looked into each other’s eyes, humbled by the moment, and Fitz reached up. He drew his foppish locks away from his face and guided his lips towards his. The Doctor himself closed the final gap between them. His lips were oddly cool, and his tongue tasted of tea and bonbons. He was perhaps not an experienced kisser, but what he lacked in finesse he made up for in enthusiasm. His hands pushed into Fitz’s hair as he slid forward in his lap, so that their groins met. Fitz kissed him back, letting go of his hair and grabbing at his thighs instead. It must have been minutes before the Doctor broke the kiss. He looked lost, as if the kiss had been what had anchored him to reality. Fitz stroked his cheek, and he leaned into the touch gratefully, like a cat who appreciated being petted.

‘I don’t quite know how it’s done, but I want to do more,’ the Doctor said quietly.

‘I’m sure we can figure something out,’ Fitz answered, entertained at his innocence.

‘If we took our clothes off, and sat like this...’ the Doctor suggested as he trailed his hand down Fitz’s chest experimentally.

‘I’d like that,’ he said, his breathing becoming shallow again. He thought of the scenario and pulled the Doctor close again for another kiss. They kissed for a long time, lips slipping against each other and tongues touching, until it ended and the Doctor smiled.

‘Tea,’ he then said decisively and climbed off his lap. With a wink he left the garden, leaving Fitz mildly disappointed. Then he reminded himself of the Doctor’s inexperience - he could not expect that he would go to bed with him at once. It was not primarily the shyness of a virgin, but a kind of flitting behaviour so typical for the Doctor. He would not sleep with him until the fancy struck him directly; like with any of the Doctor’s actions, one might not lead naturally to another. Fitz went upstairs to his room to do something about his current condition, before returning to the kitchen for tea with the Doctor.


	6. Chapter 6

Fitz had expected the Doctor, but it was not until a week later when there was a knock on the door a while after he had gotten into bed. He heard from the knock that it was he, but he had not expected the Doctor to look so distraught.

‘Are you alright?’ he asked and opened the door fully. ‘Come in.’ The Doctor obeyed and accepted his hand to lead him to the bed, where he sat down heavily.

‘Something is wrong with the house,’ he explained finally.

‘The house?’ Fitz repeated, puzzled. ‘Why?’

‘It’s crying,’ the Doctor said simply. He was about to point out that houses did not cry, before he remembered that the way the Doctor saw the world was not the way others did.

‘Don’t listen to it,’ he simply said, but the Doctor shook his head and then clamped his hands over his ears.

‘How can I not, when it’s everywhere?’ he said loudly.

‘There, there, lie down,’ Fitz urged and crept up to lie beside him. It was an odd reminiscence of how they had lain the night before he had been committed. He lay beside him with an arm around his body until his countenance relaxed and he lowered his hands from his ears. He offered no explanation to what had brought this on, only sat up, moved to give him more space and then in one smooth motion took off his nightshirt. Unabashed by his nakedness, he lay down with his hands clasped over his stomach, watching Fitz inquisitively. Faintly entertained, he followed suit, lying down beside him and drawing the covers over them. They lay shoulder to shoulder, arm to arm. It felt oddly chaste, like two children sharing a bed. Still looking him in the eye, the Doctor moved one hand down and placed it over Fitz’s groin, as if trying to cover him up. His gaze grew questioning, presumably at his flaccid state.

‘Give me a kiss,’ Fitz told him, and he leaned in, taking his lip between his. He took the opportunity to embrace him and draw his fingers up and down his back. The Doctor removed his hand and rolled on top of him. Their actions were slow and measured, like an explorer stepping on untrodden soil. More than once, Fitz paused and asked if he was certain about this, and the Doctor only egged him on. The Doctor was unfamiliar with the sensations of the flesh - when he had said that he had not known what love meant, he had not been lying. Fitz forced himself to keep his eyes open, intent on remembering how the Doctor’s face looked as astonishment and pain and rapture passed over it. When they lay tightly in each other’s embrace and Fitz drew his hands over the Doctor’s alabaster-white skin, he asked:

‘You’ll keep me safe, won’t you?’

‘Of course,’ Fitz answered sleepily.

‘We will save each other,’ the Doctor mused and nuzzled closer. ‘And I’ll never have to go back to that place, will I?’

‘No, never.’ Then, enveloped in darkness and humming with the contentment of their first illicit illustrious union, it felt as if it were true. It was as if nothing whatsoever could break this embrace.

***

Fitz woke to find his arms empty, the bed cold where the Doctor had lain. He sat up, hair on end and eyes cloudy with sleep, and was aware of footsteps outside. The door was pushed open, and the Doctor entered the room. He was wrapped in his dressing-gown, but rather than the light, poetic spark which had possessed him after their tryst yesterday, his eyes were wide and pale with agitation. In his hand there was an envelope.

‘This was on the kitchen table,’ he said and reached it out. ‘I went into the kitchen - I thought Sam would be in the kitchen - but all there was was this...’ Fitz rose out of bed and took it from him, bringing it to the window to read the writing on it. It bore a single word - “RENT”. When he opened it, he found a wad of notes. When he counted it through, he got it to four pounds, sixteen shillings, two months’ rent. He looked up at the Doctor, who was watching him fiercely.

‘It’s Sam’s handwriting,’ he said, looking at the word again.

‘Why?’ the Doctor persisted. It seemed to Fitz that it was upsetting him rather too much, but there was something about the appearance of this envelope that gave him a bad feeling.

‘Let’s ask her,’ he said, managing to sound purposeful as he got his own dressing-gown out and shrugged it on. When he could pass as decent, he signaled to the Doctor to stay where he was and then crossed the corridor to Samantha’s room. His knock gave no answer. ‘Samantha!’ he shouted through the door. There was still no reaction. It was unlike Samantha not to be up at this point, and not to answer the door... Making a swift decision, his fist moved down and unclenched to try the door. It swung open soundlessly. He did not even have to step in to notice something odd. The paper flowers and the note-sheets she could not read and the penny-dreadfuls and the Bible were all gone. The only loose item in the room was her apron, flung over the neatly made bed.

 _How will I explain this to the Doctor?_ Fitz thought. Not even knowing quite what “this” was he made his way back to his own room and guided the Doctor to a chair, keeping hold of his hands as he told him:

‘She’s not in her room, and her things are gone.’ The Doctor stared at him, as if he had said it in a foreign language.

‘Where is she?’ he asked finally.

‘I don’t know,‘ Fitz admitted and, taking a deep breath, said: ‘I think... she might have left.’ Once again he looked perplexed. Fitz took the envelope from his pocket and showed it to him, even if he knew what it looked like as he had found it. ‘This is two months’ rent, Doctor. This month’s, and next.’

‘So why is she gone?’ the Doctor insisted, and seemed to be struck by an idea. ‘Is she not coming back?’ He tried to get up, but Fitz pushed him down again. In answer he gave a frantic whimper and tried again.

‘Doctor, stay calm,’ Fitz commanded, taking hold of his arms. The Doctor kept up the half-hearted struggle for a moment more, before he slumped down in the chair again, staring at him in dismay. ‘Right,’ Fitz said and drew a deep breath. ‘I’m going to make you a nice cup of tea, and then I’m going to go and find Samantha.’

‘What if she doesn’t come back?’ he asked urgently. ‘You don’t know what dangers there are out there...’ Something in his tone made Fitz think that he was referring not to the usual hazards of London, but to his imaginary monsters of steel and fear.

‘It’s alright,’ Fitz hushed and embraced him. The Doctor clung to him as if for dear life, and extracting himself of his grip to go downstairs took a long time. Despite what his doctor had said, Fitz felt false when he tipped the laudanum bottle over the tea cup, counting the drops. At eight, he screwed the cork onto the bottle again and put it back in the furthest corner of the cupboard. This vague disgust at himself remained as he watched the Doctor drink it and the artificial calm spread through him. He led him to bed before he was too drowsy and, certain that he would be under for long enough, he kissed his brow and got dressed quickly. The police-station was not far off, but he had not considered how hard it would be to explain the situation.

‘I’d like to report someone missing,’ he told the duty sergeant, who nodded at him to continue and got out a notepad. ‘Miss Samantha Jones of 18 Elsworthy Road. She’s... eum, my landlord’s maid.’ The sergeant gave him an odd look.

‘Your name? Your landlord’s, sir?’

‘I’m Fitzgerald Kreiner. My landlord’s... Doctor John Smith.’

‘Any particular reason why your landlord doesn’t deal with the matter?’

‘He’s not well,’ Fitz said curtly. ‘We haven’t seen her since dinner yesterday. This morning, all her things were gone from her room and there was an envelope with money for the rent on the kitchen table.’

‘I thought you said she was the maid,’ the duty sergeant said. ‘Why does she pay rent?’

‘Well, she... she was a tenant of kinds. Mostly she did the maid’s job...’ He broke off and exclaimed: ‘Look, this isn’t important. She’s missing, and we’re worried.’

‘It seems to me like you don’t have any way to explain why she was there in the first place, sir,’ the duty sergeant said, a malevolent glint in his eye. ‘By the sound of it, she scampered. Lone girl in a house with two men - can’t blame her, can you?’ Fitz was about to swear at him, but he did not want to end up arrested for such a thing, so he simply glared at him and turned on his heel. Once back in the house, he sat at the bedside, stroking the Doctor’s hair until he had to leave for the market. He left him a note, instructing him not to leave the house and not to worry. He took the spare keys with him and locked the door, once again having to fight down the self-hate at his own patronising actions, which made the house little better than the asylum.

***

Fitz had hoped that there had been some kind of mistake and that Samantha would turn up on the doorstep, but it was almost as if she had never lived there. He had never reflected on how helpless the Doctor would be and now was without her. It was not even the housekeeping which suffered most, even if her cooking was vastly superior to Fitz’s. Her absence had made the Doctor nervous and pale, and Fitz grew more reluctant than usual to tend the stall at the market and leave him on his own. He managed to convince Mrs Simms to let him work less, but she was unhappy about it and made sure to point out how much of his wages she would keep. Half a year ago, he had been angry with her, but now he did not care, because there were more important things at stake. It took over a week before the Doctor seemed to accept what had happened, when he said one day over dinner, staring at his hands:

‘She’s really gone, isn’t she?’

‘I think so,’ Fitz answered. The next question of ‘why?’ was written on the Doctor’s face, but he did not voice it, and Fitz was secretly glad. He had asked it himself over and over again, but he thought he knew the answer. He was certain that it had to do with her love for the Doctor, but whether it had been his obliviousness or his approaching Fitz which had driven her away he did not want to guess. What was more disturbing was that she had sneaked away in the night, without as much as a letter of explanation or good-bye, only a soulless envelope with money.

Left to their own devices, all they had was each other, and they took every opportunity at closeness. Their love, which had started as such a joyful, almost naïve thing, had turned more into a necessity, which knitted together their lives, keeping them from the brink of madness. As Fitz had worried it would, Samantha’s sudden disappearance had had a bad effect on the Doctor’s state of mind. He only hoped that keeping him company and showing him affection would make it better. They would often sleep in the same bed, simply for comfort and warmth; whenever they retired separately, the Doctor would leave his room and pad across to Fitz’s room, where he would slip into his bed and burrow his cold feet against his. Fitz, whether half-asleep or still lucid, would embrace him, and he would lie awake behind the Doctor, an arm slung over him, as his lover fell asleep. Much as Fitz enjoyed the intimacy, the uncomfortable sleeping situation and the strain of looking after the Doctor exhausted him. One could tell if the past few days had been bad from the darkness under his eyes and the lines in his forehead. A few times, he had, despite what he had promised himself and the Doctor, considered taking him to the asylum, if not to be committed then at least to be looked over by a physician. There were the days when the Doctor would not leave the garden, frantically tending his herbs and flowers; the days when he would sit cross-legged in the porch, waiting for Samantha to return; the nights when he would wake Fitz up with his screams and talk of things from his maddened imagination - glass men and evil encased in metal and a magic box. But Fitz could not bear to bring him close to that place. When he became too unruly, he would trick him into drinking laudanum, always making sure to hide the bottle and not to give him too much, making sure not to make a habit of it. He rather committed that small act of dishonesty than have him taken away. Sometimes, he would turn bitter, and he would wonder how what they had had those short few days, which had been so wonderful, had been perverted into this thing which only functioned to keep the Doctor moderately sane. When that happened, he blamed Samantha. Often, he tried simply not to think of what had happened, and instead concentrate on the Doctor. He could not bear to be angry with him, even if he sometimes felt like he should be.

How Mrs Simms found out about the Doctor he did not know, but a month or so after the Doctor and he had become the only inhabitants of the house near Primrose Hill Park, his employer had asked him tartly one morning:

‘How’s your new life as a manservant, then, Kreiner? I’ve heard it’s a real gentleman you live with, there.’

‘I’m his tenant, not his manservant,’ Fitz said glumly and dragged on his cigarette. ‘I’m just doing him a favour.’

‘And soon he’ll have you scrubbing the floors, I’m sure,’ Mrs Simms answered back as she tied string around the little bunches of violets. ‘Are you just going to stand there and gawk, boy, or help me as you’re paid to do?’ Suppressing a sigh, Fitz crossed and helped tie the bunches of violets and place them in baskets for the flower girls. The cold morning sunshine was giving life to the almost empty market place. A few flower girls, talking and laughing amongst themselves, were already approaching their stall to collect the baskets they paid to sell. Mrs Simms tutted and said: ‘Wouldn’t you be better off with a nice girl like that? A man has to chose his life, you know. What comes of a man with no wife? Gets lonely, he does, and bitter. Now, a man who gets married, he may have a rough time, but at least...’ But Fitz had stopped listening. While Mrs Simms had started on her customary speech on the virtues of marriage, he had spotted a girl, walking a small distance behind the flower girls. She walked along slowly, her step uncertain, as she pulled a big shawl around herself, obscuring the old dark green dress she wore. From under her bonnet, which was the colour paper took on when one spilt tea on it, cascaded a mane of hair so black that it looked sketched with coal. Neither the clothes nor the hair looked familiar, but there was something which had made him notice her - her gait, perhaps, or her way of holding her shoulders and head. Where had he seen her before? She was momentarily obscured by the flower girls, who leaned in to shake a particularly entertaining joke. When they drew back again, he saw that she had stopped and was looking up at the sky. The sun fell on her face, and Fitz’s stomach jolted. Throwing the bunch of violet he had been holding and his cigarette to the ground, he ran towards her, scattering the flower girls and sending Mrs Simms screaming after him. He did not heed them, simply shouted her name as he started to slow down. The girl looked his way. The look of surprise was only visible for a moment before she grabbed her skirts and ran. He set off after her, Mrs Simms’ screams and threats swallowed up by the sound of the city.

From the square into the streets beyond, around corners and through alleyways they ran. She tried to lose him, but he knew Hoxton too well, and her worn shoes were making her stumble and slow down. He closed in on her until he was finally in line with her and managed to grab her arm.

She stopped abruptly, pulling it away from him. He lost the grip but took hold of her wrist instead. The mute tug-of-war lasted for a few moments, until she stopped, her arm relaxing.

‘Please let me go,’ she pleaded. ‘Please, Fitz, let me go!’ Her voice broke and she tried to pull herself loose again. Fitz simply stared at her; using his name had been a way of admitting her own identity. ‘ _Please_!’ she begged, pulling for a final time and then collapsing against him, weeping. He took her shoulders and held her at arm’s length.

‘What’s happened to you, Samantha?’ he asked, looking her up and down. Last time he had seen her, she had been troubled but collected, dressed in her light muslin dress with the apron she wore around the house over it, her blond hair in a loose braid down her back. Had he not seen her face, he would have thought it was some passing fancy which had made him spot her. The worn clothes and the too short dress sleeves were unlike anything she had worn on Elsworthy Road, and even her face had changed. During that month, she looked like she had aged several years. Her hair was unwashed, and he thought that there was a bruise down one side of her face.

‘I can’t talk to you,’ she said, the pitch of her voice turning hysteric as she tried to break loose again. ‘Go away!’

‘No,’ he said. That occasional anger returned to him suddenly. ‘You need to explain yourself.’ He looked around at the street, and then said: ‘Let’s find somewhere to talk.’ Still he held onto her a few moments to make sure that she would not run, and then lead her towards a nearby pub. Making her sit down at a table in the corner, he asked her what she wanted to have.

‘Gin,’ she said dully. He forced a laugh.

‘Really, Sam. What would you like?’

‘No, I want gin,’ she repeated, staring at the table. He pressed his lips together, feeling unable to object, and got two small glasses of gin. When he returned to the table, she had removed her bonnet; he noticed that her scalp was dark with dye. Samantha accepted the glass, but did not taste it yet, only turned it between her fingers and hung her head. Finally she asked: ‘How’s the Doctor?’

‘He’s been better,’ Fitz answered reservedly. He felt that she had little business to ask such questions. They were silent for a moment, while he wondered where he should start. There were too many questions. ‘Why have you dyed your hair?’ he asked.

‘I thought it suited me,’ she said without looking at him.

‘Why did you leave?’ She closed her eyes to block him further. Then in deliberation she took her glass and knocked back the gin, making a face as she swallowed it.

‘I wasn’t good enough for him,’ she admitted. ‘He didn’t need me anymore.’

‘Sam, he might snap any day,’ Fitz exclaimed. ‘He was getting better! But now... He barely eats. He talks a load of gibberish...’

‘But he’s rid of me,’ she said emphatically. ‘That’ll do him good.’

‘No, it won’t!’ he shouted back, loud enough to make the publican look sharply at him. She hung her head, pressing the heel of her hand against one of her eyes to keep herself from crying.

‘I love him,’ she whispered. ‘But I couldn’t stay there.’ When he did not answer, her hand fell and she raised her gaze. Fitz was struck by how fierce it looked. ‘I thought you knew,’ she said accusingly.

‘Knew what?’ he asked, bewildered.

‘What I was before I met the Doctor,’ she just said.

‘You were in the Salvation Army,’ Fitz said.

‘Not for very long,’ Samantha said with a shrug. ‘And that was all because of the Doctor.’ Her annoyance turned into disbelief. ‘Did you really think I was some innocent child? Surely everything about me screamed rescue girl?’

Fitz stared at her. If he closed his eyes, he could see the old Samantha, the blonde virgin, and the idea seemed preposterous. But the dark-haired Samantha opposite him... He did not want it to be true. She had been a silly girl sometimes, but never like that. The girl sitting at the table with him, on the other hand...

‘What happened?’ he asked quietly.

‘I ran away from home,’ she explained. ‘I could either starve as a seamstress or I could make a decent living with the assets I had.’ She glanced up at him and asked: ‘Can you blame me, Fitz?’

‘Did you lie when you said that the Doctor had saved you from some thugs who attacked you for rescue work, then?’ He remembered suddenly that the Doctor had said that the first time, she had not been in the Salvation Army at all...

‘No,’ she sighed. ‘He did save me, only he was... a little late. I think I fainted in his arms. When I woke up, I was there, with the Salvation Army. It was odd, because suddenly it felt like the right thing to do, because _he_ had brought me there. But I didn’t lie to you - he saved me once again, after I had been rescued. From the same men, even.’ She looked away and added: ‘My pimps.’ They sat in oppressive silence for a while longer.

‘What was I supposed to do?’ she asked at last. ‘Don’t you see, Fitz, that he’d be better off without a companion who keeps a bottle of gin in the garden shed, when things get too hard?’ Fitz simply stared at her. Not Samantha the charity worker, the sweet-hearted girl, but Samantha, the drinker, the whore.

‘So all that... the person you were...’ he started. ‘Was that just a part to play?’

‘What isn’t?’ she asked. ‘But it’s not one I could continue playing. It hurt too much.’ He swallowed, the tragedy suddenly feeling like a personal affront.

‘I tried to make him marry you,’ Fitz told her. Now she laughed and reached over the table to take his hand.

‘Oh, Fitz,’ she said. ‘I could never marry the Doctor.’

‘I thought you wanted to.’

‘Yes, I did,’ she admitted, smiling sorrowfully, ‘but I knew I never could. Don’t you think he deserves better? I couldn’t pretend to be even his dainty little housekeeper. How could I ever play his wife?’ She loosened her grip of his hand, but still kept her fingers on his. ‘This is who I am,’ she said and gestured to herself. ‘It’s not a pleasant life, but I don’t belong in that house anymore. Perhaps I did once, when he saved me, but I grew out of it. That girl - that blond Samantha - was someone the Doctor created to keep him company. It was a role to play. But I couldn’t, not as well as I wanted to.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Fitz said. Her words hit him in waves, but they did not impact him.

‘At last, it seemed to me like this,’ Samantha sighed. ‘Either, I charged three shillings for any man who wanted me, or I pined away after the one man who didn’t want me, until I was a dry husk of a crone.’

‘Sam, this place will kill you.’

‘Some part of it, yes,’ Samantha admitted and shrugged, as if she knew and did not care. ‘The gin or the punters or the pox - but what does it matter?’

‘Are you happy?’ he persisted.

‘Are you?’ she just answered. Fitz looked away, thinking. _Happy? No, but real people aren’t happy. Besides, there may be more important things than happiness in this world._ Samantha nodded at his silence. ‘You see, Fitz. Let me ruin my own life. Perhaps the Doctor did the right thing to save me that one time, simply so that I could lapse again. I can’t live like that.’ Fitz gulped down his gin and they rose in unison, the meeting suddenly over. When they stepped out of the pub, Samantha grabbed his arm and looked into his eyes.

‘Look, Fitz, don’t tell him you met me,’ she said. ‘It’d be better if he didn’t know. If he thought I was gone, or dead, even.’

‘I don’t think it would be,’ Fitz said, shaking his head. His throat felt very tight all of a sudden. ‘Sam, can’t you reconsider?’ She shook her head.

‘Don’t you think that it would hurt him to see me like this?’ she asked. ‘Knowing I’ve sold all the pretty dresses he got me, and pawned my gold cross, and don’t take in sewing for a living any longer?’ She pressed his arm urgently. ‘Promise me that you’ll take care of him. Find someone else, if need be - a maid or a nurse or a tenant - someone who deserves him.’ She looked him up and down and then said: ‘I think the person he really deserves and who deserves him, though, is you.’ Fitz bit his lip. Samantha smiled. ‘I know he’s a sodomist, you know. Perhaps that’s a good thing, after all.’ He looked away, hoping he did not blush as much as it felt like. In that unguarded moment, Samantha’s hand slipped down to his and, using it as leverage as she got up on tip-toe, she kissed his cheek. ‘Please take care of him,’ she repeated, and suddenly she had let go of his hand and was walking down the street, arranging her bonnet. Fitz let her go, feeling that dull ache in his chest which comes from losing a friend.

When she was out of sight, he started walking, not towards the market but away from it. He knew that Mrs Simms’ ire had probably reached so far that she would not want him back, and facing her today seemed useless. Slowly he meandered up to Pentonville Road and walked through Somerstown until he came to Regents Park. By then he had walked for an hour, and the walk through the park and then along Primrose Hill Park took almost as long. When he stepped into the house on Elsworthy Road, he felt exhausted from the walk and drained from the encounter at the market. The only thing disturbing the quiet of the house was the Doctor’s humming as he came out of the living room, smiling him a greeting. He made a surprised little sound when Fitz embraced him suddenly, but returned the embrace; for a moment their roles were reversed, where the Doctor was the strong one and Fitz the one who needed to be comforted. He pressed his face into the Doctor’s hair and thought of the things he had seen and heard. He wanted to explain the two Samanthas to him, to assure him that she was safe, to tell him that he had probably lost his job at the market. On the other hand, none of it mattered now. A sudden light feeling started to unfold in his stomach. It took a few moments before he managed to identify it as hope. He pushed his fingers into the Doctor’s hair to hold him close. All those months ago, the Doctor had claimed that he wanted to save him. Now it was Fitz’s turn to save the Doctor. Of all the things he thought when they stood there embracing in the hallway, the only one he articulated was this:

‘I love you.’ The Doctor tightened the embrace and pressed his lips against his cheek. He did not need to answer; words were unnecessary. They simply clung to each other, an exile and his friend, who had happily cast away reality for him. The promises that needed to be made were contained in that fact.


End file.
